John Simkin

It looks great. A good example of collaborative work. I hope other visitors to the Forum with follow Dan's example.

In an interview with Walter Cronkite on 2nd September, Kennedy clearly stated his policy on Vietnam: “I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it.” Kennedy then went on to criticize Diem’s “repressions against the Buddhists”. (102) On 9th September, Henry Cabot Lodge met with Diem and threatened him that aid would be cut-off unless Ngo Dinh Nhu left his government. Yet according to a New York Times story, the CIA continued to back Nhu. This included John Richardson, the Saigon CIA station chief disbursing a regular monthly payment of $250,000 to Nhu and his men. (103) Four days later, Lodge suggested that Richardson should be ordered back to Washington as “he symbolized long-standing American support for Nhu.” John McCone defended Richardson and objected to the idea that he should be replaced by someone like Edward Lansdale. Kennedy met with Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor on 2nd October, 1963. Kennedy told McNamara to announce to the press the immediate withdrawal of one thousand soldiers from Vietnam. Kennedy added that he would “probably withdraw all American forces from Vietnam by the end of 1965”. When McNamara was leaving the meeting to talk to the White House reporters, Kennedy called to him: “And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots too.” In his statement to the press McNamara softened the President’s views by stating that in his judgment “the major part of the U.S. military task” in Vietnam could be “completed by the end of 1965.” (104) Diem and Nhu were murdered on 1st November, 1963. The news reached Kennedy the following day. According to David Kaiser, Kennedy “left the room in shock”. (105) Despite this news, Kennedy made no move to change or cancel his troop reduction. As his aides, Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers pointed out: “The collapse of the Diem government and the deaths of its dictatorial leaders made the President only more sceptical of our military advice from Saigon and more determined to pull out of the Vietnam War.” (106) It has been suggested by William Colby, Frederick Nolting, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon that Kennedy had ordered Diem’s assassination. There is no evidence for this view. In fact, the behaviour of Diem was giving Kennedy a good excuse to withdraw support for his government. Kennedy knew that Diem was incapable of providing a coalition government that would gain the support of the South Vietnamese people. Robert Kennedy argued against the assassination of Diem as it would leave the government in the “hands of one man that we don’t know very well.” (107) The Kennedy brothers were aware that the man who took control in South Vietnam would probably be no better than Diem at establishing a coalition government. The assassination of Diem was therefore not part of Kennedy’s policy to withdraw from Vietnam. John Kennedy never disguised the fact that he held some responsibility for the death of Diem. On 4th November he dictated his thoughts on the assassination. He made it clear that he was against the assassination. He pointed out that others, including his brother, were against the idea. He blames Henry Cabot Lodge, Averell Harriman, George Ball, Roger Hilsman and Mike Forrestal for promoting the idea. However, he acknowledges that he should have made it clearer that the assassination of Diem was unacceptable. Robert Kennedy gave an account of his brother’s views about Diem in an interview recorded in 1964: “He (John Kennedy) would have liked to have gotten rid of Diem if he could get rid of him and get somebody proper to replace him. He was against getting rid of him until you knew what was going to come along, whether the government that was going to replace it had any stability, whether it would, in fact, be a successful coup... We had the difficult problem that, in fact, people had been encouraged to have a coup and now to pull the rug out from under them meant their death. That complicated the problem. And then what really brought the coup on - I guess, from what I've read since then - is the fact that Diem planned a coup himself, a fake coup: He was going to pick up all these people and arrest them and say they were participating in a coup and then execute them. (108) There is considerable evidence that in 1963, John F. Kennedy began making moves to drop Lyndon Johnson as his running-mate. According to Kennedy’s private secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, on 19th November: “As Mr. Kennedy sat in the rocker in my office, his head resting on its back he placed his left leg across his right knee. He rocked slightly as he talked. In a slow pensive voice he said to me, 'You know if I am re-elected in sixty-four, I am going to spend more and more time toward making government service an honourable career. I would like to tailor the executive and legislative branches of government so that they can keep up with the tremendous strides and progress being made in other fields.' 'I am going to advocate changing some of the outmoded rules and regulations in the Congress, such as the seniority rule. To do this I will need as a running mate in sixty-four a man who believes as I do.' Mrs. Lincoln went on to write "I was fascinated by this conversation and wrote it down verbatim in my diary. Now I asked, 'Who is your choice as a running-mate?' 'He looked straight ahead, and without hesitating he replied, 'at this time I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.'" (109) To make politics and honourable career, Kennedy says he has to drop Johnson as his running-mate. Several events were taking place that convinced Kennedy that Johnson was not an honourable man. One reason for this was the activities of Johnson over the TFX scandal. The Senate Permanent Investigating Subcommittee had revealed links between Lyndon Johnson and Fred Korth and the granting of the TFX contract to General Dynamics. (110) Another close friend of Johnson, Bobby Baker, had been forced to resign on 7th October, 1963. Baker, like Korth, was accused of corruptly obtaining federal contracts. The previous year he had had established the Serve-U-Corporation with his friend, Fred Black, and mobsters Ed Levenson and Benny Sigelbaum. The company was to provide vending machines for companies working on federally granted programs. In September, 1963, Ralph Hill, the owner of Capitol Vending Company, filed suit against Baker and the Serv-U Corporation. Hill’s business partner was Congressman John McMillan of South Carolina. Hill claimed that he had paid Baker $5,000 in payoff money in order to get a vending machine concession at Melpar, a Virginia-based company which manufactured missile components. (111) In his autobiography, Wheeling and Dealing, Baker claims that Lyndon Johnson became very concerned with these events. He sent Walter Jenkins to ask him to quietly settle the lawsuit as he believed that Robert Kennedy was attempting to get him removed from office. Jenkins told Baker: “The boss (Johnson) would hate to see these things blown up. Reporters have been around asking questions and he’s afraid Bobby Kennedy’s putting them up to hanging something on you so as to embarrass him.” (112) Johnson was right that Robert Kennedy was out to get him. Burkett Van Kirk, chief counsel for the Republican minority on the Senate Rules Committee later told Seymour Hersh that Senator John Williams of Delaware was being fed information by Robert Kennedy about the involvement of Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Baker in a series of scandals. Williams, the Senate’s leading investigator of corruption, passed this information to the three Republicans (John Sherman Cooper, Hugh Scott and Carl Curtis) on the ten-member Rules Committee. However, outnumbered, they were unable to carry out a full investigation into Johnson and Baker. Van Kirk claimed that Robert Kennedy supplied this information because he wanted “to get rid of Johnson.” (113) In his autobiography, Forty Years Against the Tide, Carl Curtis gives an insider view of the attempted investigation into the activities of Lyndon Johnson, Bobby Baker, Walter Jenkins and Fred Black. According to Curtis, Johnson managed to persuade the seven Democrats to vote against hearing the testimony of important witnesses. This included Margaret Broome, who served as Bobby Baker’s secretary before the position was taken by Carole Tyler, who later became his mistress. Tyler did testify but refused to answer questions on the ground that she might incriminate herself. Tyler was later to die in an airplane crash on the beach near the Carousel Motel, owned by Bobby Baker. (114) In his autobiography, Curtis described Baker, Jenkins and Black as “contact men”. He added: “Contact-men existed primarily to obtain for their clients and themselves some share of the vast pool of riches in the possession of swollen centralized political bureaucracies. The more impressive a contact-man’s political connections, the better he and his clients would fare.” (115) According to W. Penn Jones, “Bobby Baker was about the first person in Washington to know that Lyndon Johnson was to be dumped as the Vice-Presidential candidate. Baker knew that President Kennedy had offered the spot on the ticket to Senator George Smathers of Florida... Baker knew because his secretary. Miss Nancy Carole Tyler, roomed with one of George Smathers' secretaries. Miss Mary Jo Kopechne had been another of Smathers' secretaries.” (116) It is clear that Johnson knew he was going to be dumped as Vice President although it was not clear who his replacement was going to be. Johnson was also aware that Attorney General Robert Kennedy was leaking information to the Senate Rules Committee about his corrupt activities. Robert A. Caro points out in Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, that this corruption was organized by close political associates such as John Connally, Ed Clark, Cliff Carter, Walter Jenkins, Tommy Corcoran and Jesse Kellam. Caro argues that this money often came from the armaments or oil industries. George and Herman Brown, the co-owners of Brown & Root (Halliburton) were probably his main suppliers of money. Caro also quotes Claude Wild, chief lobbyist of the Gulf Oil Corporation, of having the task of paying Johnson, via Walter Jenkins, $50,000 in 1960. (117) It was however, the TFX contract that was Johnson’s main source of stress at this time. Johnson knew that John Williams had arranged for Don. B. Reynolds to appear before a closed session of the Senate Rules Committee on 22nd November, 1963. Reynolds told of seeing a suitcase full of money which Bobby Baker described as a "$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract". His testimony came to an end when news arrived that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. (118) According to Edward Jay Epstein, Reynolds also provided information to the Warren Commission. Reynolds said that Bobby Baker had told him that Kennedy "would never live out his term and that he would die a violent death." Baker had also said that "the FBI knew that Johnson was behind the assassination". (119) In the weeks following the death of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson seemed fairly preoccupied with the testimony of Don B. Reynolds before the Senate Rules Committee. His concerns grew when B. Everett Jordan, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, phoned Johnson on 6th December, 1963, to tell him that someone had leaked details of Reynolds’ testimony to the investigative journalist, Clark Mollenhoff. Jordan insisted he was doing his best to keep the information from becoming public: “I’m trying to keep the Bobby (Baker) thing from spreading… Because hell, I don’t want to see it spread either. It might spread a place we don’t want it to spread… Mighty hard to put a fire out when it gets out of control.” (120) This telephone call reveals that Jordan and Johnson were not only concerned with covering-up the Bobby Baker scandal. The corrupt awarding of the TFX contract was only part of a much larger scandal that has never been fully exposed. I mean by this the way that the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence Complex had been fully integrated into the American political system. As Ernest Fitzgerald pointed out in his book, The Pentagonists: An Insider's View of Waste, Mismanagement, and Fraud in Defense Spending: "In other banana republics the military comes to power with a sudden coup and the installation of a junta. Here it is different.... America runs on money. And the military has quietly come to vast economic power by taking vast amounts of the federal income for itself." (121) Johnson also made an interesting telephone concerning the Bobby Baker scandal to George Smathers on 10th January, 1964. Clark Mollenhoff had reported in the Des Moines Register, that Ellen Rometsch had been “associating with Congressional leaders and some prominent New Frontiersmen”. (122) At the time, Rometsch was being investigated by the FBI as a possible Soviet spy. Robert Kennedy asked J. Edgar Hoover to help persuade Everett Dirksen and Mike Mansfield to stop a Senate investigation into Mollenhoff’s claim. (123) However, soon after the assassination of John Kennedy, B. Everett Jordan, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, announced that he intended to look into reports of “party girls in Bobby Baker’s circle”. This was probably an attempt to put pressure on Robert Kennedy to keep quiet about events relating to his brother's assassination. This was only a short-term measure as when a committee member attempted to ask one witness about Bobby Baker’s girls, Jordan ruled him out of order. (124) In the telephone call to George Smathers, Johnson points out that Bobby Baker has a tape-recording of politicians and U.S. officials at his town house and the Quorum Club. Johnson tells Smathers that the tape “involves you and John Williams and a number of other people.” Smathers replies that he knows about the tape and that it also includes the voices of Baker’s girls as well as Hugh Scott, one of the Republican members of the Senate Rules Committee, who along with Carl Curtis and John Sherman Cooper, had been asking awkward questions about Johnson on the Senate Rules Committee. Scott, Curtis and Cooper were the only Republican members on the committee. John Williams, also apparently on the tape, was the man who had been supplying the Republicans with information about the Bobby Baker case that he had received from Robert Kennedy. (125) Johnson also adds that Robert Kennedy and Hugh Scott are also on the tape. Smathers’ replies: “Thank God, they’ve got Hugh Scott in there. He’s the guy that was asking for it. But she also mentioned him, which is sort of a lifesaver. So I don’t think that’ll get too far now. Jordan’s orders.” Johnson is still concerned about the damage that Scott can do and orders Smathers to do what he can to “make them (the Republicans) behave”. He also adds that Richard Russell was also working behind the scenes to stop the story reaching the public. (126) Johnson then goes on to discuss the Don B. Reynolds case with Smathers. He confesses that he has a copy of Reynolds’ FBI file. The only problem is “there ain’t a goddamn thing in it that they can even indict him on.” Smathers’ replies that the best way to stop the story emerging is to get Everett Dirksen (Republican leader in the Senate) and Thomas Kuchel (Republican Senate Whip) on their side. According to Smathers they should be willing to keep quiet about it as there is evidence that Dirksen and Kuchel have also been involved “with this German girl” (Ellen Rometsch). Johnson was clearly concerned about the damage that Reynolds and Baker could do to his political career. The lobbyist, Robert N. Winter-Berger, claims he was with John McCormack on 4th February, 1964, when Johnson entered the Speaker’s office. Apparently oblivious to Winter-Berger’s presence, Johnson said to McCormack: “John, that son of a bitch is going to ruin me. If that cocksucker talks, I’m gonna land in jail…. We’re all gonna rot in jail.” Johnson claimed that Robert Kennedy and John Williams were the ones involved in exposing the scandal. “You’ve got to get to Bobby (Baker), John. Tell him I expect him to take the rap for this on his own. Tell him I’ll make it worth his while. Remind him that I always have.” (127) Johnson now launched a smear campaign against John Williams, the man they called the "conscience of the Senate". He arranged for the IRS to carry out an investigation into his tax returns. According to Victor Lasky: “This meant the senator had to leave Washington and submit to a line-by-line audit by an IRS agent. It also meant that Williams had to curtail his personal investigation into Baker’s tangled affairs.” (128) An official working for Johnson told Williams that his mail was being intercepted and read before it was delivered. Williams went to the press with this story but despite an editorial in the Washington Star that stated: “The Senate should be totally outraged. Obviously someone high in the Executive Branch issued the instructions for this monitoring.” (129) However, the rest of the press ignored this story. Johnson also ordered his aides, Walter Jenkins (130) and Bill Moyers (131) to obtain information that they could use to blackmail Reynolds into silence. When this failed, this information was then leaked to Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. As a result, The Washington Post reported that Reynolds had in the past “brought reckless charges in the past against people who crossed him, accusing them of being communists and sex deviates”. (132) The treatment of Reynolds in the press had an impact on other potential witnesses. One important businessman, who previously had promised Williams he would provide evidence, told him: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Senator. I never talked to you before in my life. I’m sorry, but I’m sure you understand.” (133) The investigation into the role Johnson and Baker played in obtaining the TFX contract therefore came to an end. The original contract was for 1,700 planes at a total cost of $5.8 billion, or about $3 million per plane. By the time they were delivered they cost over $9.5 million per plane. General Dynamics had been saved from bankruptcy by the TFX contract. As Kirkpatrick Sale pointed out: “It turned out by 1966 to have a totally unworkable design – the wings kept falling off – so Johnson gave it top priority; and when it was finally sent into combat and proved to be totally unworkable, grounded within the first few months, no one seemed to care much, since the whole thing had effectively spread more than $6 billion of federal money around the land, much of it ending up in Texas pockets.” (134) In the weeks following the assassination, Johnson was also concerned with Kennedy’s tax reform bill that had been submitted to Congress in January 1963. This included the removal of the oil depletion allowance. As Donald Gibson has pointed out: “He (Kennedy) also proposed changes in foreign tax credits which allowed U.S. based oil, gas, and mineral companies to avoid paying U.S. taxes.” (135) In September, Congress passed the bill after it had deleted many of Kennedy’s proposals to close tax loopholes, including the abolition of the oil depletion allowance. When Kennedy was assassinated, the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Harry Byrd of Virginia, was still discussing the proposed legislation. Johnson feared that in a wave of sympathy, the Senate might now agree to Kennedy’s original proposals. A few days after the assassination, James Reston wrote in the New York Times: “President Kennedy had to die to create a sympathetic atmosphere for his program.” (136) The day after Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson phoned up George Smathers, his man on the Finance Committee: “Tell me, what is the situation on the tax bill?” Smathers replies: “I made a deal, just confidentially, that Ribicoff and Long and myself and Fulbright would vote against any motion to take the bill away from the Chairman. He (Harry Byrd) would agree to close the hearings.” He adds “the smart thing to do, in light of developments, would be for you to get the appropriation bill through real quick.” (137) Johnson follows Smathers’ advice and the issue of the oil depletion allowance is removed from the agenda. The main change that Johnson makes to Kennedy’s policies concerns his foreign policy. As David Kaiser points out in American Tragedy, Johnson returned to Eisenhower policy “which decided upon a militant response to any new Communist advances virtually anywhere on the globe.” (138) One of Johnson’s first decisions was to move Kennedy’s Ambassador to Mexico, Thomas C. Mann, to the post of Under Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. Mann, a fellow Texan, had held liberal views during the early 1950s, he had for example, argued against the CIA overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. However, by 1963, he shared the Eisenhower/Johnson view of international communism. Johnson also called off the secret meetings that were taking place between Fidel Castro and people like Lisa Howard on behalf of the Kennedy administration. On 12th February, 1964, Howard took a message from Castro to Johnson asking for negotiations to be restarted. It included the following comment about the forthcoming presidential election campaign: “If the President feels it necessary during the campaign to make bellicose statements about Cuba or even to take some hostile action - if he will inform me, unofficially, that a specific action is required because of domestic political considerations, I shall understand and not take any serious retaliatory action.” (139) When Johnson did not respond to this message she contacted Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. On 26th June 1964, Stevenson sent a memo to Johnson saying that he felt that "all of our crises could be avoided if there was some way to communicate; that for want of anything better, he assumed that he could call (Lisa Howard) and she call me and I would advise you." (140) In a memorandum marked top secret, Gordon Chase wrote on 7th July that it was important "to remove Lisa from direct participation in the business of passing messages" from Cuba. (141) It was at this point that negotiations between Johnson and Castro came to an end. Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at Washington's National Security Archives who has reviewed all the new evidence, recently told the Guardian newspaper: "It shows that the whole history of US-Cuban relations might have been quite different if Kennedy had not been assassinated." (142) Lyndon Johnson showed little interest in either negotiating with, or removing, Fidel Castro. As he told Dean Rusk, Maxwell Taylor and John McCone on 2nd December, 1963, South Vietnam is “our most critical military area right now.” David Kaiser points out that Johnson “never seriously considered the alternatives of neutralization and withdrawal.” Kaiser adds: “Johnson, in short, accepted the premises of the policies that had been developed under Eisenhower – premises whose consequences Kennedy had consistently refused to accept for three years.” (143) Johnson also opposed Prince Sihanouk’s new proposal for a conference on Cambodian neutrality. Johnson feared this would encourage Thailand and South Vietnam to follow the neutral policy that had been with Kennedy’s encouragement, achieved by the government in Laos. He also rejected suggestions by Mike Mansfield for a truce in Vietnam as he did not want “another China”. Mansfield replied, that the “United States did not want another Korea either”. (144) Johnson told General Paul Harkins, commander of the U.S. military assistance in South Vietnam, that it was necessary to “make clear that the US will not accept a Communist victory in South Vietnam and that we will escalate the conflict to whatever level is required to insure their defeat.” (145) According to Stanley Karnow, Johnson told the joint chiefs at a White House reception on Christmas Eve 1963, "Just let me get elected, and then you can have your war." (146) In February, 1964, Johnson removed Roger Hilsman as Assistant Secretary for the Far East. Hilsman, who had been in charge of Kennedy’s Vietnam policy, had been a loyal supporter of neutralization. Hilsman was replaced by William Bundy, who shared Johnson’s views on military involvement in Vietnam. In an interview for the 1999 CNN Cold War documentary on the Vietnam War, Hilsman explained Kennedy’s policy during 1963: “First of all, from the beginning, he was determined that it not be an American war, that he would not bomb the North, he would not send troops. But then after …you remember the Buddhist crisis in the spring of '63, this convinced Kennedy that Ngu Dinh Diem had no chance of winning and that we best we get out. So, he used that as an excuse, beat on McNamara to beat on the JCS to develop a withdrawal plan. The plan was made, he approved the plan and the first one thousand of the sixteen thousand five hundred were withdrawn before Kennedy was killed. If he had lived, the other sixteen thousand would have been out of there within three or four months.” Hilsman went onto explain how Johnson changed policy towards Vietnam: “Well, what Johnson did was, he did one thing before he expanded the war and that is he got rid of one way or another all the people who had opposed making it an American war. Averill Harriman, he was Under Secretary of State, he made him roving ambassador for Africa so he'd have nothing to do with Vietnam. Bobby Kennedy, he you know, he told Bobby Kennedy that he ought to run for governor of Massachusetts, you see. Bobby confounded him by running for the Senate… He wanted to get rid of me, Lyndon Johnson did. Well, Johnson's a very clever man. When he wanted to get rid of Grenowski, who was the Postmaster General, he offered him the chance of being the first American ambassador to Poland. he offered me... he found out that I'd spent part of my childhood in the Philippines, and he tried to persuade me to become ambassador to the Philippines, but that was just to keep me quiet, you see and so instead I went to Columbia University, where I could criticize the war from outside. Johnson was a very clever man, so the first thing he did was he nullified or got rid of all the people - and he knew as well, he knew who were the hawks and who were the doves… Johnson literally transferred, fired, drove out of government all the people that were really knew something about Vietnam and were opposed to the war. (147) Robert Komer sent a memo to McGeorge Bundy showing concern about Johnson’s decision to reverse Kennedy’s foreign policy. He complained that this new “hard line” would “increase the chances that in addition to the Vietnam, Cuba, Cyprus, Panama and other current trials – will be added come summer Indonesia/Malaysia, Arab/Israeli, India/Pakistan crises which may be even more unmanageable.” (148) On 2nd March, 1964, Johnson telephoned Robert McNamara, to prepare a statement on Vietnam. Two days later, McNamara issued a statement rejecting withdrawal, neutralization, or American ground troops. This was discussed with the five Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Maxwell Taylor argued for “the progressive and selective attack against targets in North Vietnam”. General Curtis LeMay advocated an immediate “hard blow”. Johnson replied he did “not want to start a war before November”. (149) Later that month, a group of generals, with the approval of Johnson, overthrew Joao Goulart, the left-wing president of Brazil. This action ended democracy in Brazil for more than twenty years. Once again, Johnson showed that his policy was to support non-democratic but anti-communist, military dictatorships, and that he had fully abandoned Kennedy’s neutralization policy. In June, 1964, Henry Cabot Lodge, resigned as ambassador of Saigon. McGeorge Bundy gave Johnson six recommendations for his successor: Robert Kennedy, Sargent Shriver, Robert McNamara, Roswell Gilpatric, William Gaud and himself. Johnson rejected all the names on the list and instead selected General Maxwell Taylor. Bundy complained bitterly that Johnson had appointed a military man. However, Johnson, who was determined to have a war in Vietnam, replied that the ambassador of Saigon would soon be a “military job” and that Taylor was “our top military man”. (150) Johnson always intended to wait until after the election in November, 1964, before beginning the war against North Vietnam. Public opinion polls showed that the American people were overwhelmingly against sending combat troops to South Vietnam. Most leading figures in the Democratic Party shared this view and had told Johnson this was a war he could not win as China was likely to send troops into Vietnam if the country was bombed or invaded. Johnson’s strategy changed when Barry Goldwater won the Republican Party nomination in July. Goldwater had been arguing that Johnson had not been aggressive enough over Vietnam. When interviewed by Howard K. Smith on television, Goldwater argued that the United States should start bombing North Vietnam. Smith suggested that this “risked a fight with China”. “You might have to do that” Goldwater responded.” On other occasions, Goldwater had insisted that atomic weapons should be used in Vietnam. (151) Johnson was now free to trigger a war with North Vietnam. He therefore gave permission for OPLAN 34A to be executed. This was a new operations plan for sabotage operations against North Vietnam. This included hit-and-run attacks along the North Vietnamese coast. On 30th July, the American destroyer, the Maddox, left Taiwan for the North Vietnamese coast. On 2nd August, the Maddox opened fire on three North Vietnamese boats, seriously damaging one boat but not sinking it. (152) Later that day the incident was discussed by Lyndon Johnson, Dean Rusk, George Ball, General Earle Wheeler and Robert McNamara’s new deputy, Cyrus Vance. As a result of the meeting, Vance approved new attacks on North Vietnam beginning on the night of 3rd August. Soon after entering North Vietnamese waters on 4th August, Captain Herrick of the Maddox reported that he was under attack. However, later he sent a message that raised doubts about this: "Review of action makes reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather reports and over-eager sonar men may have accounted for many reports. No actual sightings by "Maddox". Suggest complete evaluation before further action." David Kaiser argues that “exhaustive analysis of the evidence makes it impossible to believe that any attack occurred that night.” (153) Despite this, President Johnson immediately ordered “a firm, swift retaliatory strike” against North Vietnamese naval bases. (154) He ordered the bombing of four North Vietnamese torpedo-boat bases and an oil-storage depot that had been planned three months previously. President Johnson then went on television and told the American people that a total of nine torpedoes had been fired at American ships and as a result he had ordered a retaliatory strike. Warned by Johnson’s announcement, the North Vietnamese managed to bring down two American planes, killing one pilot and capturing the other. (155) Congress approved Johnson's decision to bomb North Vietnam and passed what has become known as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution by the Senate by 88 votes to 2 and in the House of Representatives by 416 to 0. This resolution authorized the President to take all necessary measures against Vietnam and the National Liberation Front (NLF). As James Reston pointed out in the New York Times: “The Congress was free in theory only. In practice, despite the private reservations of many members, it had to go along… it had the choice of helping him or helping the enemy, which is no choice at all.” He then added, as a result of this resolution, who could be trusted with this enormous new power – Johnson or Goldwater?” (156) As David Kaiser has argued convincingly in his book, ‘American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War’: “By initiating 34A attacks and simultaneously authorizing DeSoto patrols, the administration had brought about one brief military confrontation between North Vietnamese and American forces. The second spurious attack had then become the pretext for retaliation, a congressional resolution authorizing war, and the movement of additional U.S. air assets into South Vietnam.” (157) Notes 1. Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation (17th January, 1961) 2. Tom Paine, The Rights of Man (1791) 3. John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (pages 111-12) 4. J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study, 1902 (page 127) 5. George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara, 1905 6. David Kirkland, My Life of Revolt, 1935 (page 84) 7. Gerald Nye, speech at the Conference of Causes and Cures of War (January, 1930) 8. Gerald Nye, speech reported in the New York Times (10th February, 1936) 9. Senate Report on Activities and Sales of Munition Companies (April, 1936) 10. Jack Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker, 1979 (pages 49-99) 11. Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great, 1979, (pages 183-190) 12. Carl Bernstein, CIA and the Media, Rolling Stone Magazine (20th October, 1977) 13. For a detailed account of how the media was manipulated by the CIA in the reporting of events in Guatemala see Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala 1952-54, 1999. 14. James Dunkerly, Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central America, 1988, (page 429) 15. Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, 1989 (page 302) 16. Sidney Lens, The Military-Industrial Complex, 1970 (page 1) 17. Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation (17th January, 1961) 18. William Proxmire, speech in the Senate, 24th March, 1969 19. William Proxmire, Report from Wasteland: America’s Military-Industrial Complex, 1970 (pages 99-103) 20. Stanley Lens, The Military-Industrial Complex, 1970 (pages 42-43) 21. William Proxmire, speech in the Senate, 12th November, 1958 22. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968 (page 496) 23. William Proxmire, speech in the Senate, 23rd Maqrch, 1958 24. Lyndon Johnson, speech in the Senate, 8th March, 1958 25. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968 (page 497) 26. Ralph G. Martin, A Hero For Our Time, 1983 (page 155) 27. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (page 53) 28. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968 (page 524) 29. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (page 160) 30. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968 (page 525) 31. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1961 (page 206) 32. Katharine Graham, Personal History, 1997 (pages 282-283) 33. Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, 1977 (page 58) 34. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 122) 35. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 218) 36. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978 (pages 123-126) 37. Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, The Case Against Congress, 1968 (page 132) 38. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978 (pages 126-127) 39. Dan Briody, The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money, 2004 (page 150) 40. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 221) 41. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 126) 42. Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy, 1966 43. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 91) 44. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President, 1967 (page 121) 45. Katharine Graham, Personal History, 1997 (pages 292) (pages 46-49) 46. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (pages 46-49) 47. Anthony Champagne, Congressman Sam Rayburn, 1984 (page 151) 48. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 50) 49. Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift, 1975 (pages 33-39) 50. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 50) 51. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President, 1967 (pages 142-147) 52. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 91) 53. Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, The Case Against Congress, 1968 (pages 438-440) 54. Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, 1989 (page 277) 55. Anthony Champagne, Congressman Sam Rayburn, 1984 (page 151) 56. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 92) 57. Robert J. Art, The TFX Decision: McNamara and the Military, 1968 (pages 62-63) 58. William Proxmire, speech in the Senate, 24th March, 1969 59. I. F. Stone, The New York Review of Books, 1st January, 1969 60. Richard Austin Smith, Fortune Magazine, February, 1962 61. Seth Kantor, Who Was Jack Ruby?, 1978 (page 19) 62. Clark R. Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, 1965 (pages 133-137) 63. Award of the X-22 (VTOL) Research and Development Contract, 1964 (page 9) 64. Robert J. Art, The TFX Decision, 1968 (page 5) 65. I. F. Stone, The New York Review of Books, 1st January, 1969 66. Quoted by Frederic M. Scherer, The Weapons Acquisition Process: Economic Incentives, 1964 (page 37) 67. TFX Contract Investigations Hearing Report, March 1963 (pages 3-4) 68. Seth Kantor, Fort Worth Press (24th October, 1962) 69. Clark R. Mollenhoff, Pentagon, 1967 (pages 299-300) 70. Fort Worth Telegram (13th December, 1962) 71. Clark R. Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, 1965 (page 171) 72. William Proxmire, Report from Wasteland: America’s Military-Industrial Complex, 1970 (pages 100-102) 73. Clark R. Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, 1965 (pages 188-193) 74. See “Missiles and Rockets” (11th February, 1963) and Aviation Week & Space Technology (25th February, 1963) 75. Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 1993 (page 220) 76. Hanson W. Baldwin, Saturday Evening Post (9th March, 1963) 77. Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, 1977 (page 144) 78. Stanley Lens, The Military-Industrial Complex, 1970 (page 146) 79. Richard D. Mahoney, Sons and Brothers, 1999 (page 117) 80. Edwin Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman (ed.), Robert Kennedy in his Own Words, 1988 (pages 77-79) 81. Harris Wofford, Of Kennedy and Kings, 1980 (pages 103-200) 82. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 2) 83. Fabian Escalante, CIA Covert Operations 1959-62: The Cuba Project, 2004 (page 12) 84. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 2) 85. Howard W. Chase and Allen H. Lerman, Kennedy and the Press: The News Conferences, 1965 (page 25) 86. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 281-282) 87. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 50) 88. I. F. Stone, The New York Review of Books, 1st January, 1969 89. Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, 1989 (pages 306-307) 90. Memorandum written by McGeorge Bundy’s aide, Michael Y. Forrestal, dated 26th April, 1962. It was first published in The New York Times, 5th December, 1998. 91. Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 1967 (page 501) 92. John McCone was interviewed by Harry Kreisler on 21st April, 1988. 93. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 198) 94. Lamar Waldron & Thom Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice, 2005 (page 4) 95. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 16) 96. Richard D. Mahoney, Sons & Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, 1999 (page 279) 97. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 198) 98. William J. Rust, Kennedy and Vietnam, 1985 (page 119) 99. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 212) 100. Ted Szulc, The New York Times (24th August, 1963) 101. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 226) 102. Walter Cronkite, CBS News, 2nd September, 1963 103. The New York Times, 9th September, 1963 104. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 17) 105. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 275) 106. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 17) 107. John Kennedy, transcript, 4th November, 1963 108. Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman, (eds.) Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words, 1988 (page 40) 109. Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson, 1968 (page 204) 110. Robert J. Art, The TFX Decision, 1968 (page 6) 111. Clark R. Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, 1965 (pages 270-273) 112. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978 (pages 172-176) 113. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1997 (page 407) 114. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978 (pages 200-202) 115. Carl T. Curtis, Forty Years Against the Tide, 1986 (page 248) 116. W. Penn Jones Jr., Texas Midlothian Mirror (31st July, 1969) 117. Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002 (page 406) 118. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978 (page 194) 119. Edward Jay Epstein, Esquire Magazine, December, 1966 120. B. Everett Jordan, telephone conversation with Lyndon B. Johnson (5.34 p.m., 6th December, 1963) 121. Ernest Fitzgerald, The Pentagonists: An Insider's View of Waste, Mismanagement, and Fraud in Defense Spending, 1989 (page 70) 122. Clark Mollenhoff, Des Moines Register (26th October, 1963) 123. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters, 1988 (pages 906-914) 124. Michael R. Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1997 (page 158) 125. Carl T. Curtis, Forty Years Against the Tide, 1986 (page 243-281) 126. George Smathers, telephone conversation with Lyndon B. Johnson (9.01 p.m., 10th January, 1964) 127. Robert N. Winter-Berger, The Washington Pay-Off: An Insider’s View of Corruption in Government, 1972 (pages 65-67) 128. Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, 1977 (page 146) 129. John Barron, The Case of Bobby Baker and the Courageous Senator, Reader’s Digest (September, 1965) 130. Walter Jenkins, telephone call to Lyndon B. Johnson (7.30 p.m. 27th January, 1964) 131. Bill Moyers, telephone call to Lyndon B. Johnson (6.28 p.m. 3rd February, 1964) 132. The Washington Post (5th February, 1964) 133. Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, 1977 (page 149) 134. Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift, 1975 (page 137) 135. Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency, 1994 (page 23) 136. James Reston, New York Times (28th November, 1963) 137.Lyndon B. Johnson, telephone conversation with George Smathers (9.01 p.m., 23rd November, 1963) 138. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 2) 139. Message sent by Fidel Castro via Lisa Howard on 12th February, 1964. 140. Adlai Stevenson, memorandum sent to Lyndon Johnson on 26th June, 1964. 141. Gordon Chase, White House memorandum, 7th July, 1964 142. Julian Borger, The Guardian (23rd November, 2003) 143. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (pages 288-290) 144. Mike Mansfield, memorandum sent to Lyndon Johnson (6th January, 1964) 145. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 292) 146. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 1991 (page 342) 147. Roger Hilsman, The Vietnam War, CNN (broadcast on 6th December, 1998) 148. Robert Komer, memo to McGeorge Bundy (25th February, 1964) 149. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 304) 150. Michael R. Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1997 (pages 407-411) 151. Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm, 2001 (pages 346-347) 152. Edwin E. Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, 1996 (pages 73-74) 153. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 334) 154. Michael R. Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1997 (pages 503-504) 155. Edwin E. Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, 1996 (pages 214-231) 156. James Reston, New York Times (9th August, 1964) 157. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 338)

Part 3: 1960-69 On 17th January, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower gave his Farewell Address to the nation. It included the following passage: “Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defence; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defence establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” (1) The speech was written by two of Eisenhower’s advisers, Malcolm Moos and Ralph Williams. However, this was not the speech they had written. Eisenhower had made some important changes to the original draft. For example, Eisenhower’s speech is a warning about the future. He does not explain how he dealt with this problem during his presidency. After all, Eisenhower gave important posts to John McCone and Robert Anderson, two key figures in the “Military-Industrial Complex”. He was also the president who succumbed to the pressures of Tommy Corcoran to order the CIA to work with United Fruit in the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Guatemala in 1954. Eisenhower also encouraged and benefited from the activities of Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. It was this fanatical anti-communism that fuelled Cold War tensions and stimulated the arms race that was such an important ingredient in the development of the “Military-Industrial Complex”. Another important aspect of the speech is that Eisenhower does not mention the role of politicians in this problem. This is strange as it was only through politicians that the military and the business community got what they wanted. This was one aspect of the speech that Eisenhower changed. In the original draft, Moos and Williams had used the phrase, the “Military-Industrial Congressional Complex”. This is of course a more accurate description of this relationship. However, to use the term “Congressional” would have highlighted the corruption that was taking place in the United States and illustrated the role played by Eisenhower in this scandal (see section 2). The idea that an informal group of people from the military, government and business would work together in order to make profits out of war was not a new one. For example, Tom Paine wrote in the introduction to the Rights of Man: “What is the history of all monarchical governments but a disgustful picture of human wretchedness, and the accidental respite of a few years’ repose? War is their trade, plunder and revenue their objects. While such governments continue, peace has not the absolute security of a day.” (2) Tom Paine believed that rulers often resorted to war in an attempt to deal with internal conflicts. Abraham Lincoln was another who had identified this strategy. In 1848 he attacked President James Polk for his policy over Mexico: “Trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory – that attractive rainbow, that rises in shadows of blood – that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy – he plunged into war.” Lincoln added: “Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.” According to Lincoln, this was “the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions” and that it was important that the United States should make sure that “no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us”. (3) The first person to identify the modern Industrial-Military-Political Complex was J. A. Hobson. A strong opponent of British imperialist adventures, Hobson published “Imperialism: A Study” in 1902. It included the following passage: “Our economic analysis has disclosed the fact that it is only the interests of competing cliques of business men – investors, contractors, export manufacturers, and certain professional classes – that are antagonistic; that these cliques, usurping the authority and voice of the people, use the public resources to push their private interests, and spend the blood and money of the people in this vast and disastrous military game, feigning national antagonism which have no basis in reality.” (4) Hobson’s views had a significant impact on the consciousness of people in Europe. It helped to develop a belief in pacifism that was very strong in the early years of the 20th century. George Bernard Shaw was an example of someone who shared the views of Hobson and in his play Major Barbara, the armament maker Undershaft says: “You will make war when it suits us and keep peace when it doesn’t… When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will call out the police and the military.” (5) This mood changed in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. James Keir Hardie, the leader of the Labour Party, organized a national strike against Britain's participation in the war. However, he underestimated the ability of the state to persuade people of the need to go to war. Hardie was denounced as a traitor and died a broken man in 1915. David Kirkwood, was one of those who saw through this propaganda: “I hated war. I believed that the peoples of the world hated war, and had no hate for each other. A terrific struggle tore my breast. I could not hate the Germans. They loved their land as I loved mine. To them, their traditions and their history, their religion and their songs were what mine were to me. Yet I was working in an arsenal, making guns and shells for one purpose - to kill men in order to keep them from killing men. What was I to do? I was not a conscientious objector. I was a political objector. I believed that finance and commercial rivalry had led to war.” (6) Gerald Nye was one of the first people to identify the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex in the United States. Nye was elected to Congress in 1926 and immediately began to question the relationship between politicians and the armament manufacturers. In a speech in 1930, Nye argued: “That in nearly every war it is the people who bear the burdens and that it is not the people who cause wars bringing them no advantage, but that they are caused by fear and jealousy coupled with the purpose of men and interests who expect to profit by them.” (7) On 8th February, 1934, Nye submitted a Senate Resolution calling for an investigation of the munitions industry by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Key Pittman of Nevada. Pittman disliked the idea and the resolution was referred to the Military Affairs Committee. It was eventually combined with one introduced earlier by Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan, who “sought to take the profits out of war”. Public hearings before the Munitions Investigating Committee began on 4th September, 1934. In the reports published by the committee it was claimed that there was a strong link between the American government's decision to enter the First World War and the lobbying of the munitions industry. The committee was also highly critical of the nation's bankers. In a speech in 1936 Nye argued that "the record of facts makes it altogether fair to say that these bankers were in the heart and centre of a system that made our going to war inevitable". (8) The Report on Activities and Sales of Munition Companies was published in April, 1936. It included the following passage: “Almost without exception, the American munitions companies investigated have at times resorted to such unusual approaches, questionable favours and commissions, and methods of 'doing the needful' as to constitute, in effect, a form of bribery of foreign governmental officials or of their close friends in order to secure business. These business methods carried within themselves the seeds of disturbance to the peace and stability of those nations in which they take place.” (9) Nye became a strong supporter of “isolationism” and was a founder member of the America First Committee. Nye's known isolationist views became very unpopular after America entered the war and he lost his seat in Congress in November 1944. During the war politicians like Nye found it impossible to raise the issue of war profiteering. It was a different matter after victory had been achieved and Owen Brewster was appointed chairman of the Senate War Investigating Committee. In 1946 Brewster announced that he was very concerned that the government had given Howard Hughes $40m for the development and production of two aircraft that had never been delivered. Brewster also pointed out the President Franklin D. Roosevelt had overruled his military experts in order to hand out the contracts to Hughes for the F-11 and HK-1 (also known as the Spruce Goose). Hughes was able to get this investigation closed down by launching a smear campaign against Owen Brewster. The Senate War Investigating Committee never completed its report on the non-delivery of the F-11 and the HK-1. The committee stopped meeting and was eventually disbanded. (10) Some politicians believed that the end of the war would result in a decline in government spending on armaments. The same feeling existed at the end of the Korean War. This was openly admitted by the president of Standard Oil of California, who declared in 1953: "Two kinds of peace can be envisaged. One would enable the United States to continue its rearmament and to maintain important military forces in the Far East; it would have very little effect on industry, since the maintenance of a peace-time army requires almost as much oil as in time of war. But if there should be a great improvement in the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, and in particular a disarmament agreement, the blow to the oil industry and the rest of the economy would be terrific." It was therefore important to these industrialists that the fear of communism remained intense. This meant that others had to be recruited into this group. This included the intelligence services and leading figures in the mass communications industry. Therefore a more accurate description of the group would be the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence Complex (MICIC). In the early days of the Cold War, Frank Wisner, director of the CIA’s Office of Special Projects, established Operation Mockingbird. Wisner recruited Philip Graham of the Washington Post to run the project within the newspaper industry. Graham himself brought in others who had worked for military intelligence during the war. This included James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. According to Deborah Davis: "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles." (11) As Carl Bernstein pointed out in his fascinating Rolling Stone article: “The Agency's dealings with the press began during the earliest stages of the Cold War. Allen Dulles, who became director of the CIA in 1953, sought to establish a recruiting-and-cover capability within America’s most prestigious journalistic institutions. By operating under the guise of accredited news correspondents, Dulles believed, CIA operatives abroad would be accorded a degree of access and freedom of movement unobtainable under almost any other type of cover.” (12) According to Bernstein: “Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune.” This strategy could be seen in operation in Guatemala in 1954. The CIA was able to use their friends in the media to both portray Jacobo Arbenz Guzman as a communist and to disguise its role in the overthrow of the government. (13) It has been argued that the real reason for the overthrow of Arbenz was to relight the Cold War. Stalin had died in February 1953. That year also saw the end of the Korean War. In May 1954 the Geneva Conference began in an attempt to settle the disputes in Indochina and Formosa. Many observers were optimistic about these developments. This hope came to an end with the engineered events in Guatemala. Backed by the Republican Party in Congress, Eisenhower now had an excuse to prolong the Cold War. This he was able to do with a compliant American media still suffering the consequences of McCarthyism and the blacklisting of left-wing journalists. The events in Guatemala shaped the future of Latin America and ensured it became a focal point of the Cold War. As James Dunkerly has pointed out: “The Guatemala intervention shaped the attitudes and stratagems of an older generation of radicals, for whom this experience signaled the necessity of armed struggle and an end to illusions about peaceful, legal, and reformist methods.” (14) This strategy was highly successful and the 1950s saw a dramatic increase in defence spending. “In 1950 the military budget was $13 billion; by 1961, this had risen to $47 billion.” (15) Sidney Lens points out in his book, The Military-Industrial Complex: “From 1946 to 1967, according to the statistics of Senator J. William Fulbright, the federal government spent $904 billion, or 57.29 per cent of its budget “for military power,” and only $96 billion, or 6.08 per cent for “social functions,” such as education, health, labour and welfare programs, housing and community development. Convincing the American people that they ought to spend nine times as much on guns as on human welfare was an act of mesmerism by the military establishment without parallel”. (16) The easiest people to identify as members of the MICIC are those businessmen who ran and owned the large corporations that owed their wealth to lucrative government contracts. A study of these contracts issued between 1940 and 1960 enables the identification of such people as John McCone, Henry J. Kaiser, Herman Brown, George R. Brown, Frank Pace, Steve Bechtel, Lawrence Bell and Howard Hughes. The 1960 military budget included $21 billion for the purchase of goods. Over 75% of these contracts went to a small group of large corporations. Eighty-six percent of these defence contracts were not awarded on bids. These large corporations relied heavily on a small group of lobbyists (sometimes called contact-men). These men provided the link between these businessmen and the politicians with the power to grant and approve government contracts. Important lobbyists working in this field included Tommy Corcoran, Irving Davidson, Alan Wirtz, William Pawley, Clark Clifford, Bobby Baker and Fred Black. In his speech, Dwight Eisenhower talked about this “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry”. (17) He clearly has in mind those leading military figures that were campaigning for higher levels of defence spending. However, as William Proxmire pointed out in a speech in 1969, retired military officers played an important role in the MICC. (18) He discovered that 2,072 retired military officers were employed by the 100 contractors who replied to his survey. This was an average of almost 22 per company. However, when he considered the ten most successful contracting companies, this increased to an average of 106. This included Lockheed Aircraft Corporation (210), Boeing Corporation (169), McDonnell Douglas Corporation (141), General Dynamics (113), North American Rockwell Corporation (104), General Electrics Company (89), Ling Temco Vought Incorporated (69), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (59), TRW Incorporated (56) and Hughes Aircraft Company (55). William Proxmire also attempted to identify the politicians who were members of the MICC. In his book, “Report from Wasteland: America’s Military-Industrial Complex”, Proxmire, identified the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Richard B. Russell from Georgia, as a key figure in the MICIC. He had previously been chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee. (19) Sidney Lens agrees with Proxmire about the importance of Russell. He also adds the names of John Stennis (Mississippi), George D. Mahon (Texas) and L. Mendel Rivers (South Carolina). Lens explains: “The four men head appropriations and armed services committees which, as Seymour Hersh points out, are little more than “conduits” for translating Pentagon wishes into legislation. (20) However, it was Lyndon Johnson who was the most important member of the MICIC in Congress during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. As Majority Party leader since 1953, Johnson decided the membership of the various Congressional committees. When he first entered the Senate, William Proxmire enjoyed a good relationship with Johnson. He even went as far as to describe him as “an excellent party leader” who had “been fair to everybody”. (21) That was before Proxmire began criticizing the oil depletion allowances enjoyed by Johnson’s friends in Texas. (22) Johnson’s reaction to this attack was to prevent Proxmire from getting a seat on the Finance Committee. Proxmire was now determined to expose Johnson. On 23rd February, 1958, he made a speech claiming that “there has never been a time when power has been as sharply concentrated as it is today in the Senate.” (23) This was followed by another speech where he accused Johnson of “one-man rule”. Johnson reacted by making a speech in the Senate on 28th May where he claimed that “this one-man rule stuff is a myth”. He added: “I do not know how anyone can force a senator to do anything. I have never tried to do so.” (24) As Alfred Steinberg pointed out: “Most members, conservatives as well as liberals, enjoyed a burst of laughter involving Johnson’s pious declaration to Proxmire”. (25) In 1960 Johnson’s closest political supporters urged him to enter the race when John F. Kennedy emerged as the favourite to win the Democratic Party nomination. Sam Rayburn was especially keen for Johnson to defeat Kennedy. So was John Connally who established a Citizens-for-Johnson Committee. As Ralph G. Martin, pointed out, Johnson felt no need to campaign against Kennedy as he was convinced he “would destroy himself on the religious issue”. (26) Theodore H. White argued in “The Making of the President” that it was impossible for Johnson to win by taking on Kennedy from the beginning. “These men (Johnson, Rayburn and Connally) knew that the Johnson candidacy could not be muscled by seeking individual Convention delegates…. Their plans rested squarely on their control of Congress, on the enormous accumulation of political debts and uncashed obligations that, between them, Johnson and Rayburn had earned over years of the legislative trade.” (27) It was not until 5th July, 1960, that Johnson finally declared himself an official candidate. Johnson had been forced to leave it as late as this because he was unwilling to resign as Majority leader of the Senate. He therefore had to wait until Rayburn and himself had recessed Congress on 3rd July. Johnson immediately went onto the attack by pointed out that: “Those who have engaged in active campaigns since January have missed hundreds of votes. This I could not do – for my country or my party. Someone had to tend the store.” (28) Johnson now portrayed the front-runner as being “too young and “too inexperienced” (29) He also tried to get at Kennedy via his father. He described Joe Kennedy as being pro-Hitler. He was therefore opposing John Kennedy as he “did not want any Chamberlain umbrella man!” (30) Johnson also made reference to Kennedy’s health, pointing out that he had Addison’s disease. Despite this dirty tricks campaign, Johnson was unable to stop Kennedy being nominated. Johnson was obviously upset by this result but comforted himself with the fact that as Majority leader, he remained the second most powerful man in American politics. The great surprise is that Johnson was willing to sacrifice this power in order to become Kennedy’s running-mate. In his book, The Making of the President, Theodore H. White, expresses shock at both Kennedy’s decision to offer Johnson’s the post, and his eventual acceptance of what appeared to be a demotion. White adds that this mystery will only be solved by “tomorrow’s historians”. (31) The idea that Johnson should be Kennedy’s running-mate was first suggested by Philip Graham of the Washington Post. Graham, the key figure in the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, had been campaigning strongly for Johnson to get the nomination. However, when Graham arrived at the Democratic Party Convention in Los Angeles on 8th July, Johnson told him that Kennedy would win by a landslide. Graham then had a meeting with Robert Kennedy and was finally convinced that Johnson had indeed lost his race to be the presidential candidate. According to Katharine Graham, her husband and Joe Alsop, arranged a meeting with John Kennedy on 11th July. Alsop started the conversation with the following comment: “We’ve come to talk to you about the vice-presidency. Something may happen to you, and Symington is far too shallow a puddle for the United States to dive into.” Graham then explained the advantages that Johnson would “add to the ticket”. What is more, it would remove Johnson as leader of the Senate. (32) Kennedy agreed that Johnson would be a great asset. He knew that Johnson could deliver Texas. As Victor Lasky pointed out: “Every phase of the state’s election machinery from precinct tally clerk to the State Board of Canvassers was in the hands of Organization (read LBJ) Democrats.” (33) Hugh Sidley of Time Magazine interviewed Kennedy on the eve of the Los Angeles convention. He later claimed that Kennedy told him: “if I had my choice I would have Lyndon Johnson as my running mate. And I’m going to offer it to him, but he isn’t going to take it.” (34) After the meeting with Graham and Alsop, Kennedy told his aide, Kenneth P. O’Donnell, that it made sense to have Johnson on the ticket but he knew that he would never accept the position as it would mean he would lose his powerful position in the Senate. Kennedy assured O’Donnell that Stuart Symington, “who was acceptable to both the labour leaders and the Southerners” would be his running-mate. (35) The mystery that has to be explained is not that Johnson was offered the post, but that he accepted it. Bobby Baker has provided an interesting account of the discussions that went on about the possibility of Johnson becoming Kennedy’s running-mate. Baker describes how Johnson told him that Kennedy was coming to see him at his hotel. John Connally was of the opinion that Kennedy would offer him the job. Johnson asked Baker what he should do. Baker replied: “It’s no disgrace to hold the second highest office in the land and be one heartbeat away from the presidency.” Connally added that Johnson would be able to deliver Texas for Kennedy. At this stage Johnson was definitely against the idea. He told Baker that he would have “trouble with some of my Texas friends if I decide to run.” Sam Rayburn was one of these “Texas friends” who was strongly opposed to the suggestion that Johnson should become Kennedy’s running-mate. He quoted another Texan, John Nance Garner, who held the post under Franklin D. Roosevelt, as saying: “The office ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.” However, according to Baker, John Connally and Phil Graham “worked on” Rayburn until he “came round” to the idea that Johnson should become Kennedy’s running-mate. There still remained a significant number of opponents to Johnson’s strategy. Baker adds in his autobiography that “several Texas congressmen, spoiled by LBJ’s special attentions to their pet legislative schemes, begged him not to leave his powerful Senate post.” (36) According to Baker, one of Johnson’s political friends resorted to threats of violence against Johnson if he became the vice-presidential candidate. This was oil millionaire, Robert S. Kerr. In their book, The Case Against Congress, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson claim that “Robert S. Kerr, oil millionaire, uranium king, cattle baron and Senator from Oklahoma… dominated the Senate’s back rooms in the late 1950s and early 1960s.” (37) Pearson and Anderson point out that Kerr main concern in Congress was to preserve the oil depletion allowance. In “Wheeling and Dealing” Baker described what happened when Kerr arrived at the meeting in Johnson’s hotel room: “Kerr literally was livid. There were angry red splotches on his face. He glared at me, at LBJ, and at Lady Bird. ‘Get me my .38,’ he yelled. ‘I’m gonna kill every damn one of you. I can’t believe that my three best friends would betray me.’ Senator Kerr did not seem to be joking. As I attempted to calm him he kept shouting that we’d combined to ruin the Senate, ruin ourselves, and ruin him personally.” Johnson responded to this outburst by telling Baker to take Kerr in the bathroom and “explain things to him”. Baker did this and after hearing about the reasons for Johnson’s decision to accept the post, “Senator Kerr put a burly arm around me and said, “Son, you are right and I was wrong. I’m sorry I mistreated you.” What did Baker tell Kerr that dramatically changed his mind on this issue? According to Baker, he told Kerr: “If he’s elected vice-president, he’ll be an excellent conduit between the White House and the Hill.” What is more, if Kennedy is defeated, Johnson can blame it on Kennedy’s religion and be the likely victor in the attempt to be the Democratic Party candidate in the 1964 election. (38) Kerr would have been well aware of this argument before he entered the bathroom with Baker. If Kerr did change his mind about Johnson’s becoming Kennedy’s running-mate, then Baker told him something else in the bathroom. Maybe he explained that Johnson would become president before 1964. Members of the Suite 8F Group had not been kept up-to-date with these developments. As Dan Briody has pointed out that when Johnson agreed to become Kennedy's running mate “Herman Brown was incensed. August Belmont who was in Suite 8F with Herman Brown when the news came over the radio, recalled it this way: "Herman Brown... jumped up from his seat and said, 'Who told him he could do that?' and ran out of the room.” (39) What we do know is that Kennedy’s close political advisers were shocked when Johnson accepted the post. They, like Kennedy himself, expected him to reject the offer. Why would Johnson give up his position as the second most powerful position in the country? Kenneth P. O’ Donnell was highly suspicious of Johnson’s motives. When he mentioned that to Kennedy he replied: “I’m forty-three years old, and I’m the healthiest candidate for President in the United States. You’ve travelled with me enough to know that. I’m not going to die in office. So the Vice-Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m thinking of something else, the leadership in the Senate. If we win, it will be by a small margin and I won’t be able to live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small majority in the Senate.” (40) The problem with this argument is that Johnson was also aware that as Vice President he would lose his political power. This is why Kennedy told his aides that Johnson would turn the offer down. Yet there is evidence that Johnson was desperate to become Kennedy’s running-mate. One of Kennedy’s most important advisers, Hyman Raskin, claims that Kennedy had a meeting with Johnson and Rayburn early on the morning after his nomination. According to all other sources, at this time, these two men were strongly opposed to the idea of Johnson becoming Kennedy’s running-mate. However, Kennedy told Raskin a different story. Johnson was desperate to join the ticket and “made an offer he could not refuse”. Raskin took this to mean that Kennedy was blackmailed into offering Johnson the post. (41) This view is supported by another of Kennedy’s close advisers. Pierre Salinger was opposed to the idea of Johnson being Kennedy’s running-mate. He believed that the decision would lose more votes than it would gain. Salinger argued that Kennedy would lose the support of blacks and trade unionists Although Johnson would deliver Texas his place on the ticket would mean Kennedy would lose California. A few days after the decision had been made, Salinger asked Kennedy why? He replied, "The whole story will never be known. And it's just as well that it won't be." Salinger, like Hyman Raskin, got the impression that Kennedy had been blackmailed into accepting Johnson. (42) Kennedy must have been very concerned about this development. Why would Johnson blackmail him into accepting a post that had less power than the one that he already had? It only made sense if Johnson was going to continue using this strategy as vice president. Maybe this was only the first of many threats of blackmail. Would Johnson use his position to force Kennedy to appoint his friends to important positions in his administration? One of Johnson’s friends who did a place in Kennedy’s cabinet was John Connally as Secretary of the Navy. Connally was Johnson’s campaign manager as well as being a member of the Suite 8F Group. Connally had been for many years worked as a lawyer-lobbyist for the oilman Sid Richardson. (43) This seems a very strange choice by Kennedy. Especially as Connally had upset Kennedy during 1960 by spreading the damaging rumour that the presidential candidate was suffering from a “fatal” illness. (44) Connally held the post until resigning in order to run as Governor of Texas. His replacement was Fred Korth, another one of Johnson’s friends from Texas. It would seem that it was very important for Johnson and his backers that someone from Texas held the post of Secretary of the Navy. It is indeed a very important post. The person who holds this position is responsible for placing a large number of orders for oil and armaments. Many of the suppliers who get these contracts are based in Texas. Kennedy’s really surprising appointment was Clarence Douglas Dillon as Secretary of the Treasury. Dillon had for a long time been a passionate supporter of the Republican Party and had been a major contributor to the presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower. As a reward Dillon was appointed as Ambassador to France. In 1959 Eisenhower appointed him as Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs. The following year Dillon had been one of Richard Nixon’s financial backers. Why then did Kennedy appoint someone who had spent his adult life attacking the policies of the Democratic Party? The answer appears in Katharine Graham’s book, Personal History: “Right after the election, he (Phil Graham) started talking to and writing the president-elect about appointments to the new administration. Both Phil and Joe Alsop thought Kennedy ought to appoint our friend Douglas Dillon as secretary of the Treasury.” Graham added that as Dillon “had served as undersecretary of state in the Eisenhower administration and had contributed to the Nixon campaign… this didn't seem like a strong possibility.” (45) Therefore, the same people, Phil Graham and Joe Alsop, who convinced Kennedy to take Johnson as vice president, were also behind the appointment of Clarence Douglas Dillon. Were they also working on behalf of Johnson and Rayburn when they put forward Dillon’s name? If so, what did they want from Dillon? One possibility concerns the oil depletion allowance? The oil depletion allowance was first introduced in 1913 and allowed oil producers to use the depletion allowed to deduct just 5 per cent of their income and the deduction was limited to the original cost of their property. However, in 1926 the depletion allowance was increased to 27.5 per cent. As Robert Bryce pointed out in his book, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate: "Numerous studies showed that the oilmen were getting a tax break that was unprecedented in American business. While other businessmen had to pay taxes on their income regardless of what they sold, the oilmen got special treatment." Bryce gives an example in his book how the oil depreciation allowance works. "An oilman drills a well that costs $100,000. He finds a reservoir containing $10,000,000 worth of oil. The well produces $1 million worth of oil per year for ten years. In the very first year, thanks to the depletion allowance, the oilman could deduct 27.5 per cent, or $275,000, of that $1 million in income from his taxable income. Thus, in just one year, he's deducted nearly three times his initial investment. But the depletion allowance continues to pay off. For each of the next nine years, he gets to continue taking the $275,000 depletion deduction. By the end of the tenth year, the oilman has deducted $2.75 million from his taxable income, even though his initial investment was only $100,000." (46) Such a system was clearly unfair and only benefited a small group of businessmen in Texas. It seemed only a matter of time before Congress removed this tax loophole. However, these oilmen used some of their great wealth to manipulate the politicians in Washington. The House Ways and Means Committee (which writes tax policy) were under the control of Sam Rayburn between the years 1937-1961. According to fellow congressman, Joe Kilgore, Rayburn personally interviewed members of Congress who applied to join this committee so “he could stress the importance of maintaining the allowance and assure himself that prospective members supported it.” (47) As the historian, Robert Bryce pointed out: “If the congressmen didn’t agree with Rayburn on the oil depletion allowance, they didn’t get on Ways and Means”. (48) Texas was at the heart of American oil development in the 1930s and 1940s. All the great names of the oil industry, J. Paul Getty, H. L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, D. H. Byrd, R. E. Smith, John Mecom and Glenn McCarthy, “belong to Texas” (49) In the 1930s and 1940s Texas was virtually a one-party state. Therefore it was necessary for the oil industry to control the local Democratic Party. Sam Rayburn was the most important supporter of the oil industry in Congress in the 1930s and 1940s. Rayburn was Lyndon Johnson’s mentor. For example, during his 1948 election campaign, Johnson called for the oil depletion allowance to be raised to 30%. (50) However, the situation began to change in the 1950s. The Democratic Party had moved to the left under Roosevelt. This trend was maintained under Truman. Therefore, in 1952, the oil industry backed Dwight Eisenhower. This was reflected in his appointment of Robert B. Anderson as Secretary of the Treasury. Before his appointment, Anderson was president of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. In this post he introduced legislation beneficial to the oil industry. (51) One of Eisenhower’s first actions as president was to stop a grand jury investigation into the “International Petroleum Cartel”. Eisenhower justified his action as the need to maintain “national security”. Eisenhower’s behaviour had an impact on the oil lobby. “In 1956, officials at the nations biggest oil companies gave nearly $350,000 to Republicans while giving less than $15,000 to Democrats.” (52) Eisenhower was personally rewarded by the oil industry. Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson reported that Eisenhower’s farm was paid for by three wealthy oilmen, W. Alton Jones, Billy Byers and George E. Allen. The Internal Revenue Service discovered that these three oilmen gave Eisenhower more than $500,000 at the same time he was making decisions favourable to the oil industry. In their book, The Case Against Congress, Pearson and Anderson point out that on 19th January, 1961, the day before he left the White House, “Eisenhower signed a procedural instruction on the importation of residual oil that required all importers to move over and sacrifice 15 per cent of their quotas to newcomers who wanted a share of the action.” One of the major beneficiaries of this last-minute executive order was a company called Cities Service. The chief executive of Cities Service was W. Alton Jones, one of the men who helped pay for Eisenhower’s farm. Three months later, Jones flew in a small plane to visit the retired president. The plane crashed and Jones was killed. In his briefcase was found $61,000 in cash. No one was ever able to explain why Jones was taking such a large sum of money to Eisenhower. (53) As a U.S. senator, John F. Kennedy voted to reduce the depletion allowance. (54) Texas oilmen were obviously concerned when Kennedy became the front-runner in the 1960 presidential election. It is true that Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn were in a position to try and block the move in Congress. However, Kennedy had the potential to draw attention to this unfair tax loophole. As Sam Rayburn pointed out, if the oil depletion allowance was debated in Congress: “They’d cut it to fifteen, ten, five percent – maybe even take it away altogether. Do you think you could convince a Detroit factory worker that the depletion allowance is a good thing? Once it got on the floor, it would be cut to ribbons.” (55) During his election campaign, Kennedy changed his position on the oil depletion allowance. In October, 1960, Kennedy wrote a letter to his Texas campaign manager outlying his policies on the oil industry. He said he wanted to make “clear my recognition of the value and importance of the oil depletion allowance. I realize its purpose and value… The oil-depletion allowance has served us well”. (56) In the first two years of his presidency, Kennedy made no mention of the oil depletion allowance. Nor did he seem to mind that Connolly used his position as Secretary of the Navy to help the oil industry in Texas. In fact, Kennedy showed little interest in bringing the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence Complex under control. This is reflected in what became known as the TFX scandal. In the last few months of Eisenhower’s administration the Air Force began to argue that it needed a successor to its F-105 tactical fighter. This became known as the TFX/ F-111 project. In January, 1961, Robert McNamara, changed the TFX from an Air Force program to a joint Air Force-Navy under-taking. On 1st October, the two services sent the aircraft industry the request for proposals on the TFX and the accompanying work statement, with instructions to submit the bids by 1st December, 1961. Three of the bids were submitted by individual companies: the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, the North American Aviation Corporation and the Boeing Company. The other three bids represented team efforts: Republic Aviation & Chance Vought; General Dynamics Corporation & Grumman Aircraft; and McDonnell Aircraft & Douglas Aircraft. (57) It soon became clear that Boeing was expected to get the contract. Its main competitor was the General Dynamics/Grumman bid. General Dynamics had been America’s leading military contractors during the early stages of the Cold War. For example, in 1958 it obtained $2,239,000,000 worth of government business. This was a higher figure than those obtained by its competitors, such as Lockheed, Boeing, McDonnell and North American. (58) More than 80 percent of the firm’s business came from the government. (59) However, the company lost $27 million in 1960 and $143 million in 1961. According to an article by Richard Austin Smith in Fortune Magazine, General Dynamics was close to bankruptcy. Smith claimed that “unless it gets the contract for the joint Navy-Air Force fighter (TFX)… the company was down the road to receivership”. (60) General Dynamics had several factors in its favour. The president of the company was Frank Pace, the Secretary of the Army (April, 1950-January, 1953). The Deputy Secretary of Defence in 1962 was Roswell Gilpatric, who before he took up the post, was chief counsel for General Dynamics. The Secretary of the Navy was John Connally, a politician from Texas, the state where General Dynamics had its main plant. When he left the job in 1962 he was replaced by another Texan, Fred Korth. According to author Seth Kantor, Korth, the former president of the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth, Texas, only got the job as Secretary of the Navy after strong lobbying from Johnson. (61) A few weeks after taking the post, Korth overruled top Navy officers who had proposed that the X-22 contract be given to Douglas Aircraft Corporation. Instead he insisted the contract be granted to the more expensive bid of the Bell Aerosystem Development Company. This was a subsidiary of Bell Aerospace Corporation of Forth Worth, Texas. (62) For many years Korth had been a director of Bell (63). The chairman of the company, Lawrence Bell, was a fellow member of the Suite 8F Group. Korth also became very involved in discussions about the TFX contract. Korth, was the former president of the Continental Bank, which had loaned General Dynamics considerable sums of money during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Korth later told the McClellan committee that investigated the granting of the TFX contract to General Dynamics “that because of his peculiar position he had deliberately refrained from taking a directing hand in this decision (within the Navy) until the last possible moment.” (64). As I. F. Stone pointed out, it was “the last possible moment” which counted. “Three times the Pentagon’s Source Selection Board found that Boeing’s bid was better and cheaper than that of General Dynamics and three times the bids were sent back for fresh submissions by the two bidders and fresh reviews. On the fourth round, the military still held that Boeing was better but found at last that the General Dynamics bid was also acceptable.” (65) Stone goes on to argue: “The only document the McClellan committee investigators were able to find in the Pentagon in favour of that award, according to their testimony, was a five-page memorandum signed by McNamara, Korth, and Eugene Zuckert, then Secretary of the Air Force.” Zuckert was a close friend of Tommy Corcoran who helped to get him a post with the legal staff of the fledgling Securities and Exchange Commission in 1937. He was also closely associated with John McCone. Zuckert worked with McCone as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission in the early 1950s. McNamara justified his support for General Dynamics because “Boeing had from the very beginning consistently chosen more technically risky tradeoffs in an effort to achieve operational features which exceeded the required performance characteristics.” (66) The TFX program involved the building of 1,700 planes for the Navy and the Air Force. The contract was estimated to be worth over $6.5 billion, making it the largest contract for military planes in the nation’s history. (67) On 24th October, 1962, Seth Kantor reported in the Fort Worth Press that: “General Dynamics of Fort Worth will get the multibillion-dollar defence contract to build the supersonic TFX Air Force and Navy fighter plane, the Fort Worth Press learned today from top Government sources.” (68) This was confirmed the following month when the Pentagon announced that the TFX contract would be awarded to General Dynamics. Henry M. Jackson was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senate Government Operations Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He learned that: “Boeing’s bid was substantially lower than its competitor’s. Reports indicated Boeing’s bid was $100 million lower on an initial development contract and that the cost difference might run as high as $400 million on the total $6.5 billion procurement.” (69) On 12th December, Lyndon Johnson visited Forth Worth to join in the festivities at the General Dynamics plant. Congressman James Wright, the Texas Democrat representing the Fort Worth district introduced Johnson as the “greatest Texan of them all”. He pointed out that Johnson had played an important role in obtaining the TFX contract. Wright added “you have to have friends and they have to stick with you through thick and thin even if you do have merit on your side.” (70) During the McClellan's Permanent Investigations Committee hearings into the contract, Senator Sam Ervin asked Robert McNamara “whether or not there was any connection whatever between your selection of General Dynamics, and the fact that the Vice President of the United States happens to be a resident of the state in which that company has one of its principal, if not its principal office.” At this point McNamara was close to tears and commented that: “Last night when I got home at midnight, after preparing for today’s hearing, my wife told me that my own 12-year-old son had asked how long it would take for his father to prove his honesty.” (71) McNamara rejected the idea that Johnson was involved in the decision but evidence was to emerge that he did play an important role in the awarding of the TFX project to General Dynamics. For example, William Proxmire found some interesting information on the TFX project while investigating the role played by Richard Russell in the granting of the C-5A contract to Lockheed. The C-5A was built in Marietta, Georgia, the state that Russell represented. The Air Force Contract Selection Board originally selected Boeing that was located in the states of Washington and Kansas. However, Proxmire claimed that Russell was able to persuade the board to change its mind and give the C-5A contract to Lockhead. Proxmire quotes Howard Atherton, the mayor of Marietta, as saying that “Russell was key to landing the contract”. Atherton added that Russell believed that Robert McNamara was going ahead with the C-5A in order to “give the plane to Boeing because Boeing got left out on the TFX fighter.” According to Atherton, Russell got the contract after talking to Lyndon Johnson. Atherton added, “without Russell, we wouldn’t have gotten the contract”. (72) On 26th June, 1963, Clark R. Mollenhoff managed to interview Robert McNamara about his role in awarding the TFX contract to General Dynamics. McNamara claimed that Johnson had applied to political pressure on him concerning the contract. He admitted that he knew all about Fred Korth’s business relationship with General Dynamics and Bell Aerospace. He also revealed he was aware of Roswell Gilpatric’s role “as a lawyer for General Dynamics just prior to coming into government, the role of Gilpatric’s law firm in continuing to represent General Dynamics, and the amount of money Gilpatric had received from the law firm since becoming Deputy Defence Secretary”. However, he was convinced that this did not influence the decision made by Korth and Gilpatric. (73) Several journalists speculated that Johnson and his friends in Texas had played a key role in obtaining the TFX contract for General Dynamics. (74) When "reporters discovered that the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth, was the principal money source for the General Dynamics plant" in October, 1963, Fred Korth was forced to resign as Secretary of the Navy. (75) Hanson W. Baldwin believed that the main villain was Robert McNamara. In an article in the Saturday Evening Post, Baldwin wrote: “Mr. McNamara has pressured the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sign written statements testifying to Congress that the Administration’s defence budget is adequate. He has censored, deleted and altered statements to Congress by the chiefs of the services and their secretaries. He has downgraded, ignored, bypassed or overruled the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff… It places more and more power over the military-industrial complex in the hands of a few men in the executive branch of the government. The dollar volumes of military contracts amount to more than $20 billion annually, with billions more in backlog orders outstanding. The individual services no longer have the final power to contract… The awarding or cancellation of contracts… is now ultimately controlled by a very few men in the top echelons of the Defence Department.” (76) Johnson’s role in these events was confirmed when Don B. Reynolds testified in a secret session of the Senate Rules Committee. As Victor Lasky pointed out, Reynolds “spoke of the time Bobby Baker opened a satchel full of paper money which he said was a $100,000 payoff for Johnson for pushing through a $7billion TFX plane contract.” (77) In his book, The Military-Industrial Complex, Sidney Lens argues: “It is no accident that Washington has been almost universally on the side of conservative forces in the developing areas – Syngman Rhee in Korea, Chiang Kai-shek in China, the Shah in Iran, the militarists throughout Latin America, the king in Jordan, the king in Saudia Arabia, the military regimes in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. These conservative elements, to secure their own “vested interests,” have been willing to accept American military and economic support in return for concessions to American “vested interests”. Nor is it an accident that by and large the same legislators – Stennis, Russell, Rivers, Mundt, Goldwater, Tower, McClellan, to name a few – who are the fiercest advocates of military spending and military ventures, are also the fiercest opponents of social programs such as Medicare, higher minimum wages, antipoverty, social security, and favourable trade union legislation.” (78) In 1960 Kennedy presented himself as someone who held conservative views on both domestic and foreign issues. As Richard D. Mahoney points out in his book, Sons and Brothers: “As senator, Kennedy had zigzagged through the long obstacle course of civil rights legislation, siding in most cases, as a Ted Sorensen memo to Bobby proudly explained in December 1959, ‘with our friends in the South.’ He meant white friends.” (79) As Mahoney goes on to argue: “The most entrenched and skilled leaders of that majority in the Senate – McClellan of Arkansas, Eastland of Mississippi, Ervin of North Carolina, and Fulbright of Arkansas – were all vehement opponents of civil rights as well as close friends of Bobby Kennedy.” Kennedy admits in several interviews that were recorded as part of the Oral History Project, that he had several conversations with people like McClellan and Eastland during the campaign to assure them that the Kennedy administration would not promote the “civil rights issue”. Kennedy later described Harris Wofford, his brother special assistant for civil rights, was eventually removed from his post because he was too committed to the cause: “Wofford was very emotionally involved in all of these matters and was rather in some areas a slight madman.” (80) In his memoirs, Of Kennedys and Kings, Wofford argues that Kennedy was forced into taking a stand on civil rights because of the activities of Martin Luther King and pressure groups like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). For example, Kennedy did all he could to get the Freedom Riders to call off their activities in 1961. (81) Once in power, Kennedy appeared to support the foreign policy established by Dwight Eisenhower. The historian, David Kaiser, argues that Eisenhower’s policies “called for a military response to Communist aggression almost anywhere that it might occur”. Kaiser provides evidence that this strategy was “adopted by the State and Defence Departments in 1954-1956 and approved secretly by President Eisenhower.” (82) This policy began with the overthrow by the CIA of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala in the summer of 1954. According to one historian: “The Agency had learned a lesson from the Guatemalan revolution in the early 1950s, when a nationalist government expropriated the land and the public service enterprises of U.S. monopolies to the benefit of the peasants and the population in general. This experience gave rise to a program of infiltrating agents into countries convulsed by communist ideas.” (83) In the final months of his administration, Eisenhower was mainly concerned with trying to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba. He was also worried about events in Laos and Vietnam. However, Kaiser convincingly argues that Kennedy subtly changed foreign policy after he gained office. “Ironically, while Eisenhower’s supposedly cautious approach in foreign policy had frequently been contrasted with his successors’ apparent aggressiveness, Kennedy actually spent much of his term resisting policies developed and approved under Eisenhower, both in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. He also had to deal with the legacy of the Eisenhower administration’s disastrous attempts to create a pro-Western rather than a neutral government in Laos – a policy he quickly reversed, thereby avoiding the need for American military intervention there.” (84) Kaiser admits that he the Kennedy administration did increase the number of American military personnel in South Vietnam from 600 in 1960 to 17,500 in 1963. However, although he sincerely wanted to help the South Vietnamese government cope with the Viet Cong he rejected war as a way to do so. Kennedy’s view of America’s involvement in Southeast Asia was expressed clearly at his first ever press conference. When asked about Laos he expressed his intentions to help create “a peaceful country – an independent country not dominated by either side but concerned with the life of the people within the country.” (85) This was a marked departure from Eisenhower’s policy of supporting anti-communist military dictatorships in Southeast Asia and the Americas. This analysis of Kennedy’s foreign policy is supported by two of his most important aides, Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers. In their book, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, they describe how on 19th January, 1960, Eisenhower briefed Kennedy on “various important items of unfinished business”. This included news about “the rebel force that was being trained by the CIA in Guatemala to invade Cuba.” O’Donnell and Powers claimed that: “Eisenhower urged him to keep on supporting this plan to overthrow Castro. But Eisenhower talked mostly about Laos, which he then regarded as the most dangerous trouble spot in Southeast Asia. He mentioned South Vietnam only as one of the nations that would fall into the hands of the Communists if the United States failed to maintain the anti-Communist regime in Laos.” Kennedy was shocked by what Eisenhower told him. He later told his two aides: “There he sat, telling me to get ready to put ground forces into Asia, the thing he himself had been carefully avoiding for the last eight years.” (86) According to David Kaiser, it was not only the CIA and the Pentagon who wanted him to send troops to Laos and Vietnam. Members of his own administration, including Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Alexis Johnson, McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow and Roswell Gilpatric, were also strongly in favour of Eisenhower’s policy of “intervention in remote areas backed by nuclear weapons”. (87) Kaiser suggests the reason for this was that “these civilians were all from the GI generation, and to varying degrees they saw themselves as continuing the struggle against aggression and tyranny that had dominated their youth.” However, it has to be remembered that Johnson, McNamara and Gilpatric had all played an important role in the ensuring that General Dynamics got the TFX contract. (88) Is it possible that they had other motives for involving the United States in a long-drawn out war? Kennedy continued with his policy of trying to develop “independent” Third World countries. In September, 1962, Souvanna Phouma became head of a new coalition government in Laos. This included the appointment of the left-leaning Quinim Pholsema as Foreign Minister. However, Kennedy found it impossible to persuade Ngo Dinh Diem to broaden his government in South Vietnam. Kennedy continued to resist all attempts to persuade him to send troops to Vietnam. His policy was reinforced by the Bay of Pigs operation. Kennedy told his assistant secretary of state, Roger Hilsman: “The Bay of Pigs has taught me a number of things. One is not to trust generals or the CIA, and the second is that if the American people do not want to use American troops to remove a Communist regime 90 miles away from our coast, how can I ask them to use troops to remove a Communist regime 9,000 miles away? (89) In April, 1962, Kennedy told McGeorge Bundy to “seize upon any favourable moment to reduce our involvement” in Vietnam. (90) In September, 1963, Robert Kennedy expressed similar views at a meeting of the National Security Council: “The first question was whether a Communist takeover could be successfully resisted with any government. If it could not, now was the time to get out of Vietnam entirely, rather than waiting.” (91) The decision by Kennedy to withdraw from Vietnam was confirmed by John McCone, the director of the CIA: “When Kennedy took office you will recall that he won the election because he claimed that the Eisenhower administration had been weak on communism and weak in the treatment of Castro and so forth. So the first thing Kennedy did was to send a couple of men to Vietnam to survey the situation. They came back with the recommendation that the military assistance group be increased from 800 to 25,000. That was the start of our involvement. Kennedy, I believe, realized he'd made a mistake because 25,000 US military in a country such as South Vietnam means that the responsibility for the war flows to (the US military) and out of the hands of the South Vietnamese. So Kennedy, in the weeks prior to his death, realized that we had gone overboard and actually was in the process of withdrawing when he was killed and Johnson took over.” (92) On 1st April, 1963, the attempt by Kennedy to create an all-party coalition government in Laos suffered a terrible blow when Quinim Pholsema, the left-wing Foreign Minister, was assassinated. As David Kaiser has pointed out: “In light of subsequent revelations about CIA assassination plots, this episode inevitably arouses some suspicion.” (93) It would seem that Laos was not the only country where Kennedy was trying to develop a coalition government. According to Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartman, in the early months of 1963, a plan was put into action that would result in a palace coup led by “one of Castro’s inner circle, himself a well-known revolutionary hero.” Waldron and Hartman argue that the “coup leader would be part of the new Provisional Government in Cuba, along with a select group of Cuban exiles – approved by the Kennedys – who ranged from conservative to progressive.” (94) Kennedy told Mike Mansfield in the spring of 1963 that he now agreed with his thinking “on the need for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam”. After the meeting with Mansfield, Kennedy told Kenneth O’Donnell that when he pulled out of Vietnam in 1965: “I’ll become one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. I’ll be damned everywhere as a communist appeaser. But I don’t care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I’m re-elected. So we had better make damned sure that I am re-elected.” (95) In his book, Sons & Brothers, Richard D. Mahoney remarked: “Truman had lost his presidency over the “loss of China,” which in turn had touched off the anticommunist witch hunts by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Troubled as Kennedy was about slipping into the Asian land war, he temporized on the method of disengagement.” (96) On 10th June, 1963, Kennedy made a commencement address at the American University. “In a speech written in the White House without Pentagon or State Department clearance, Kennedy called specifically, and for the first time, for a whole new attitude towards the Soviet Union and a greater effort for true peace.” (97) Nine days later Kennedy discussed a new proposal by the State Department to take overt military action against North Vietnam. Kennedy was told that the Pentagon wanted to start bombing North Vietnam and the mining of North Vietnamese ports. (98) As David Kaiser points out in American Tragedy, Kennedy refused to approve this plan: “Ever since assuming the Presidency, Kennedy had received a long series of proposals for war in Southeast Asia from the State and Defence Departments. Rejecting them all, he had established the goals of a neutral regime in Laos and an effort to assist the South Vietnamese against the Viet Cong.” (99) Kennedy continued to have problems from the leaders of the military. On 9th July, 1963, General Maxwell Taylor explained to the National Security Council that individual Joint Chiefs did not believe that an atmospheric test ban would serve the nation well. Sixteen days later, Averell Harriman, Andrei Gromyko and Lord Hailsham signed the atmospheric test ban in Moscow. On 14th August, Diem was informed that the U.S. government would be unable to continue their present relationship if Diem did not issue a statement reaffirming a conciliatory policy towards the Buddhists and other critics of his regime. Ten days later, Ted Szulc of the New York Times reported that “policy planners in Washington” had reached the stage where they would prefer a military junta in South Vietnam to a government ruled by Diem. (100) Kennedy also gave the order for the withdrawal of 1,000 American personnel by the end of 1963. In order to achieve maximum press coverage, the plan involved taking the men out in four increments. General Maxwell Taylor spoke out against this policy and argued that the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed no withdrawal of troops should take place “until the political and religious tensions now confronting the government of South Vietnam have eased.” (101)

Rod Aldridge states: "There have been suggestions that this loan has resulted in the group being awarded government contracts. This is entirely spurious. Whilst anyone who is associated with the public procurement process would understand that this view has no credibility, I do not want this misconception to continue, as I remain passionate about the group's wellbeing." It seems the stockmarket does not agree with him. There has been a sharp drop in Capita's share price since Aldridge's loan has been made public. They are aware it will be much more difficult for Capita to bribe Blair in the future. http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/fds/hi/...28/intraday.stm

According to Ralph E. Lapp, in the 1960s Lockheed sales to the Pentagon came to 88% of its total sales, McDonnell Douglas (F-4 Phantom bomber) 75 per cent, General Dynamics (F-111 fighter bomber) 67 per cent, and Boeing (B-52 heavy strategic bombers) 54 per cent. (1) These figures reveal a serious problem faced by the arms industry. What happens when the Vietnam War came to an end? In 1967 the Electronics Industries Association commissioned a report into the future of US military spending. It concluded that the future looked good as arms control agreements “during the next decade are unlikely”. (2) It would seem that the arms industry no longer feared the negotiated deals favoured by John F. Kennedy. This was confirmed by Samuel F. Downer, vice-president of the LTV Aerospace Corporation based in Texas. In an interview with Bernard D. Nossiter of the Washington Post, Downer argued that Johnson was committed to increasing military spending: “If you’re the President… you can’t sell Harlem and Watts but you can sell self-preservation…We’re going to increase defence budgets as long as those bastards in Russia are ahead of us. The American people understand this.” (3) The real task, as always, was to convince the American public that the Soviet Union was ahead in the arms race and provided a significant threat to the security of the United States. This they were able to do until 1989. Then a new enemy had to be found. This now takes the form of Muslim Fundamentalists. Military spending in the United States is now at an all-time high and it is the same corporations who depend on this conflict for their survival. Notes 1. Ralph E. Lapp, The Weapons Culture, 1968 (pages 186-87) 2. Sidney Lens, The Military Industrial Complex, 1970 (page 55) 3. Bernard D. Nossiter, Washington Post (8th December, 1968)

Just posted on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4836024.stm The chairman of outsourcing firm Capita has quit over "spurious" claims his £1m loan to the Labour Party resulted in the group getting government contracts. Rod Aldridge, one of 12 donors who lent the party almost £14m in total before the last election, said he did "not want this misconception to continue". The loan had been "my own decision as an individual, made in good faith". Chancellor Gordon Brown told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the system had to be reformed to ensure "transparency". He said people were free to give money to political parties "in good faith", in the same way as charities, if they "want to help the cause they believe in". Tony Blair has denied accusations of nominating supporters for honours in returns for loans. Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission is expected to finalise its guidelines on political loans at a meeting in London. Mr Aldridge, who has run Capita since its foundation in 1984, said: "At present, the group's reputation is being questioned because of my personal decision to lend money to the Labour Party. "As I have made clear, this was entirely my own decision as an individual, made in good faith as a long-standing supporter of the party. "There have been suggestions that this loan has resulted in the group being awarded government contracts. This is entirely spurious. "Whilst anyone who is associated with the public procurement process would understand that this view has no credibility, I do not want this misconception to continue, as I remain passionate about the group's wellbeing." The Electoral Commission is expected to finalise its guidelines on political loans at a meeting in London. These are expected to be introduced in the Electoral Administration Bill, which is currently going through parliament. At prime minister's questions on Wednesday, Mr Blair said Labour had been "a little more open on the issue of loans" than the Tories, after it named 12 major lenders. On Tuesday Scotland Yard said it was examining three complaints that Labour had breached the honours system - something it denies. The investigation will focus on whether the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 was upheld and whether honours were given by Labour in return for loans or donations. Home Secretary Charles Clarke had questioned the competence of Labour treasurer Jack Dromey, who claimed he and other elected party officials had not been told about £14m loans arranged by Mr Blair's chief fundraiser, Lord Levy. That accusation prompted National Executive Committee chairman Sir Jeremy Beecham to say he did not think Mr Clarke had "read the situation correctly". He said it was "absolutely clear that the reasons that NEC officers, including the elected party treasurer, did not know about the loans had nothing to do with any failings on their part".

Tamas Krausz is professor of history at Elte University, Budapest. Here is an interesting account of how history is constantly being re-interpreted. As Thomas Buckle once said: “There will always be a connection between the way in which men contemplate the past and the way in which they contemplate the present.” http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6408

Tamas Krausz is professor of history at Elte University, Budapest. Here is an interesting account of how history is being rewritten in Hungary. Tamas Krausz Wednesday March 22, 2006 The Guardian Sixty-two years ago this week, Hitler's Wehrmacht began its blood-soaked occupation of Hungary. The country soon turned into a battlefield in defence of the Third Reich. The authoritarian regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, appointed a Nazi-friendly prime minister, but real power was in the hands of Edmund Veesenmayer, Hitler's resident in Budapest. The deportation of half a million Hungarian Jews to death camps was set in train. But these facts seemed to escape the notice of the supreme court of Hungary this month when it rehabilitated Laszlo Kristof, who in July 1944 was involved in the killing of an antifascist resistance leader, Endre Sagvari. Sagvari, a member of the then illegal Communist party and also one of the leaders of the Social Democratic party, died a hero when he was shot in a fight with gendarmes at a cafe in Buda. He had been organising antifascist demonstrations since the 1930s, and became a legendary leader of the anti-war underground. Apart from being a communist and a Jew in Hungary under Nazi occupation, Sagvari's bad luck was that after 1945 he was one of the very few real heroes to remember. He was made an icon of communist history. As a result, after 1990 his bust was removed to Budapest's now-famous Statue Park. However, for Hungary's hard right - and apparently for the court - this was not enough. They decided to turn the celebrated hero of the Kadar regime into a political scapegoat, insisting that Sagvari's use of a gun against those who wanted to arrest him was unlawful - as if the rule of law existed in Hungary in 1944. On March 6 the supreme court overturned the conviction of one of the gendarmes involved in Sagvari's killing. The verdict states that the 1959 show trial in which the gendarme was sentenced to death had been used to legitimise the crackdown in the wake of the 1956 uprising. It's true that the gendarmes' superiors were the main war criminals (for example, Dome Sztojay, the prime minister, and Peter Hain, the leader of the political police) and they were hanged after the war. True, the gendarmes did not want to kill Sagvari, or at least not in the cafe. But they could have had no doubts that he would have ended up in the hands of the Gestapo and been tortured and probably murdered. The court's decision has far greater implications than simply overturning the judgment of the 1959 trial. The verdict is based on the assumption that the rule of law was in force when the pro-Nazi regime sent gendarmes to liquidate a leader of the antifascist resistance. The court said the gendarmes "legally used their weapons against Sagvari, who resisted the arrest". By making such a claim, the court has defined Hitler's puppet regime as a constitutional state. As the philosopher Gaspar Tamas argued in the daily paper Nepszabadsag, it has also broken with the second Hungarian republic, founded in 1946. That was based on the acceptance that all democratic tendencies, from communists to conservative Catholics, belonged together in as much as they were all antifascists and anti-Hitler. Even after 1989, anti-Stalinism never amounted to an open rejection of antifascism or the rehabilitation of authoritarian and racist politics. The question has now been raised whether the new "democracy" will turn its back on these antifascist principles. The political message of the court's verdict has been well understood by the extreme right. Jobbik, an organisation that follows racist and irredentist traditions, wants to remove Sagvari's memorial tablet outside the cafe. Zoltan Balczo, Jobbik's leader and a former MP, said: "He was not a hero; he did not die as a martyr, but as a murderer of a lawfully acting gendarme; in other words, as a terrorist." There has been a leftwing demonstration to save the memorial plaque, but it will have no effect on the legal judgment legitimising the fascist dictatorship controlled by the Nazis. This extraordinary decision reflects a wider tendency across eastern and central Europe to rehabilitate those who collaborated with the Nazis and prewar fascists, and criminalise those who resisted them. Hungary is in the midst of an election campaign, and the ruling Hungarian Socialist party is silent over the Sagvari affair. But our politicians need to be reminded that no country which calls itself a democracy in a Europe built on the ashes of Nazi tyranny can brand as criminals those who sacrificed their lives in the struggle against fascism.·

Secret Files That Would Have Proven James Earl Ray Not Guilty March 22nd, 2006 In the first House Select Committee on Assassinations 1977 interview with James Earl Ray, Chief Counsel Richard Sprague agreed with Ray and his legal team that all materials concerning the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. as well as President John F. Kennedy (including CIA, FBI and other intelligence agency files) should be made available to them as well as the committee. Mr. Sprague, Ray and Ray's legal team believed the files would produce evidence that Ray did not shoot Martin Luther King Jr. One week later Richard Sprague was forced to resign his post because he found it impossible to do his job with the requirement that he sign a secrecy agreement before he could view the files he requested. He did not believe he could properly investigate a US Government Department or Agency if he agreed to keep secret the proof that Ray wasn't the assassin of King. Chief Counsel Richard Sprague is heard saying that he too believes all CIA, FBI and other files having anything to do with the entire matter (MLK and JFK's assassination) should be made available to the committee and Ray's legal team. It is believed that the files will contain proof that Ray was 'handled' via methods used by the Intelligence services and set up to take the wrap for the MLK assassination. It is now known that in the 1960's President Lyndon Johnson set up the 'Domestic Operations Division' (Another DOD) to carry out special operations within the United States which would be separate but support Defense Department, NSA and FBI operations of national security interest. CIA agents in the US and throughout the world could be directed from the White House via the use of a secret communication channel between the agent in the field and the President labeled CRITICOM (Critical Communication). In the execution of an assassination or what would be established as a legal execution of a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America a very simple VOCO (Verbal Order of the Commanding Officer) could be the triggering mechanism. This kind of operation would have no paperwork to prove that it ever happened and any coincidental evidence would be classified top secret and never released to the public until such time as it could be confused or would be useless for investigative purposes. James Earl Ray, Attorneys Jack and Mary Kershaw and Gary Revel-Special Investigator and Richard Sprague believed that the CIA had files that would produce evidence of a US Government-Organized Crime connection with Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Ray's admission that he was given a phone number by Raoul to call for instructions and help when needed connected organized crime. That phone number turned out to be the number for a motel in New Orleans owned by Mafia Boss Carlos Marcello. Former D. C. Congressional Delegate Walter Fountroy chaired the House Select Committee on Assassinations for a period of time and discovered his telephones and television were bugged. Fauntroy said in a 1999 trial that Richard Sprague's replacement, Robert Blakey, did not follow up on James Earl Ray's request for files from the CIA and others. What is clear is that Mr. Blakey would have signed a secrecy agreement with the CIA and others for whatever information he received thus even if he knew today that James Earl Ray was innocent he would be legally bound not to say so. http://www.bestsyndication.com/Articles/20...es_earl_ray.htm

Richard A. Sprague was born in Philadelphia. He received his B.S. from Temple University and his LL.B. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. After joining the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office in 1958, Sprague served as a Chief Assistant District Attorney, Chief of the Prosecution Division, Chief of the Trial Division and Chief of the Homicide Division. From 1966 to 1974, he was the First Assistant District Attorney of Philadelphia County. Sprague became a national figure when he successfully prosecuted Tony Boyle, President of the United Mine Workers for the murder of Joseph Yablonski. He also had a record of 69 homicide convictions out of 70 prosecutions. In 1976 Thomas N. Downing began campaigning for a new investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Downing said he was certain that Kennedy had been killed as a result of a conspiracy. He believed that the recent deaths of Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli were highly significant. He also argued that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had withheld important information from the Warren Commission. Downing was not alone in taking this view. In 1976, a Detroit News poll indicated that 87% of the American population did not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy. Coretta Scott King, was also calling for her husband's murder to be looked at by a Senate Committee. It was suggested that there was more chance of success if these two investigations could be combined. Henry Gonzalez and Walter E. Fauntroy joined Downing in his campaign and in 1976 Congress voted to create a 12-member committee to investigate the deaths of Kennedy and King. Downing named Sprague as chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Gaeton Fonzi was to later say: "Sprague was known as tough, tenacious and independent. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind when I heard of Sprague's appointment that the Kennedy assassination would finally get what it needed: a no-holds-barred, honest investigation. Which just goes to show how ignorant of the ways of Washington both Sprague and I were". Sprague quickly assembled a staff of 170 lawyers, investigators and researchers. On 8th December, 1976, Sprague submitted a 1977 budget of $6.5 million. Frank Thompson, Chairman of the House Administration Committee made it clear he opposed the idea of so much money being spent on the investigation. Smear stories against Sprague began appearing in the press. David B. Burnham of The New York Times reported that Sprague had mishandled a homicide case involving the son of a friend. Members of Congress joined in the attacks and Robert E. Bauman of Maryland claimed that Sprague had a "checkered career" and was not to be trusted. Richard Kelly of Florida called the House Select Committee on Assassinations a "multimillion-dollar fishing expedition for the benefit of a bunch of publicity seekers." Probably the most important criticism came from Eldon J. Rudd of Arizona, a former FBI agent who had worked on the assassination investigation. He declared that the HSCCA had "already fanned the flames of rumour, distortion and unwanted distrust of law inforcement agencies." However, Fauntroy defended the work of Sprague: "threshold inquiries by a thoroughly professional staff... in the last three months have produced literally a thousand questions unanswered by the investigations of record." On 2nd February, 1978, Henry Gonzalez replaced Thomas N. Downing as chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Gonzalez immediately sacked Sprague as chief counsel. Sprague claimed that only the full committee had the power to dismiss him. Walter E. Fauntroy agreed with Sprague and launched a campaign to keep him as chief counsel. On 1st March, Gonzalez resigned describing Sprague as "an unconscionable scoundrel" Louis Stokes of Ohio was now appointed as the new chairman of the HSCA. After a meeting with Stokes on 29th March, Sprague agreed to resign and he was replaced by G. Robert Blakey. Sprague later told Gaeton Fonzi that the real reason he was removed as chief counsel was because he insisted on asking questions about the CIA operations in Mexico. Fonzi argued that "Sprague... wanted complete information about the CIA's operation in Mexico City and total access to all its employees who may have had anything to do with the photographs, tape recordings and transcripts. The Agency balked. Sprague pushed harder. Finally the Agency agreed that Sprague could have access to the information if he agreed to sign a CIA Secrecy Agreement. Sprague refused.... "How," he asked, "can I possible sign an agreement with an agency I'm supposed to be investigating?"

Secret Files That Would Have Proven James Earl Ray Not Guilty March 22nd, 2006 In the first House Select Committee on Assassinations 1977 interview with James Earl Ray, Chief Counsel Richard Sprague agreed with Ray and his legal team that all materials concerning the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. as well as President John F. Kennedy (including CIA, FBI and other intelligence agency files) should be made available to them as well as the committee. Mr. Sprague, Ray and Ray's legal team believed the files would produce evidence that Ray did not shoot Martin Luther King Jr. One week later Richard Sprague was forced to resign his post because he found it impossible to do his job with the requirement that he sign a secrecy agreement before he could view the files he requested. He did not believe he could properly investigate a US Government Department or Agency if he agreed to keep secret the proof that Ray wasn't the assassin of King. Chief Counsel Richard Sprague is heard saying that he too believes all CIA, FBI and other files having anything to do with the entire matter (MLK and JFK's assassination) should be made available to the committee and Ray's legal team. It is believed that the files will contain proof that Ray was 'handled' via methods used by the Intelligence services and set up to take the wrap for the MLK assassination. It is now known that in the 1960's President Lyndon Johnson set up the 'Domestic Operations Division' (Another DOD) to carry out special operations within the United States which would be separate but support Defense Department, NSA and FBI operations of national security interest. CIA agents in the US and throughout the world could be directed from the White House via the use of a secret communication channel between the agent in the field and the President labeled CRITICOM (Critical Communication). In the execution of an assassination or what would be established as a legal execution of a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America a very simple VOCO (Verbal Order of the Commanding Officer) could be the triggering mechanism. This kind of operation would have no paperwork to prove that it ever happened and any coincidental evidence would be classified top secret and never released to the public until such time as it could be confused or would be useless for investigative purposes. James Earl Ray, Attorneys Jack and Mary Kershaw and Gary Revel-Special Investigator and Richard Sprague believed that the CIA had files that would produce evidence of a US Government-Organized Crime connection with Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Ray's admission that he was given a phone number by Raoul to call for instructions and help when needed connected organized crime. That phone number turned out to be the number for a motel in New Orleans owned by Mafia Boss Carlos Marcello. Former D. C. Congressional Delegate Walter Fountroy chaired the House Select Committee on Assassinations for a period of time and discovered his telephones and television were bugged. Fauntroy said in a 1999 trial that Richard Sprague's replacement, Robert Blakey, did not follow up on James Earl Ray's request for files from the CIA and others. What is clear is that Mr. Blakey would have signed a secrecy agreement with the CIA and others for whatever information he received thus even if he knew today that James Earl Ray was innocent he would be legally bound not to say so. http://www.bestsyndication.com/Articles/20...es_earl_ray.htm

Secret Files That Would Have Proven James Earl Ray Not Guilty March 22nd, 2006 In the first House Select Committee on Assassinations 1977 interview with James Earl Ray, Chief Counsel Richard Sprague agreed with Ray and his legal team that all materials concerning the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. as well as President John F. Kennedy (including CIA, FBI and other intelligence agency files) should be made available to them as well as the committee. Mr. Sprague, Ray and Ray's legal team believed the files would produce evidence that Ray did not shoot Martin Luther King Jr. One week later Richard Sprague was forced to resign his post because he found it impossible to do his job with the requirement that he sign a secrecy agreement before he could view the files he requested. He did not believe he could properly investigate a US Government Department or Agency if he agreed to keep secret the proof that Ray wasn't the assassin of King. Chief Counsel Richard Sprague is heard saying that he too believes all CIA, FBI and other files having anything to do with the entire matter (MLK and JFK's assassination) should be made available to the committee and Ray's legal team. It is believed that the files will contain proof that Ray was 'handled' via methods used by the Intelligence services and set up to take the wrap for the MLK assassination. It is now known that in the 1960's President Lyndon Johnson set up the 'Domestic Operations Division' (Another DOD) to carry out special operations within the United States which would be separate but support Defense Department, NSA and FBI operations of national security interest. CIA agents in the US and throughout the world could be directed from the White House via the use of a secret communication channel between the agent in the field and the President labeled CRITICOM (Critical Communication). In the execution of an assassination or what would be established as a legal execution of a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America a very simple VOCO (Verbal Order of the Commanding Officer) could be the triggering mechanism. This kind of operation would have no paperwork to prove that it ever happened and any coincidental evidence would be classified top secret and never released to the public until such time as it could be confused or would be useless for investigative purposes. James Earl Ray, Attorneys Jack and Mary Kershaw and Gary Revel-Special Investigator and Richard Sprague believed that the CIA had files that would produce evidence of a US Government-Organized Crime connection with Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Ray's admission that he was given a phone number by Raoul to call for instructions and help when needed connected organized crime. That phone number turned out to be the number for a motel in New Orleans owned by Mafia Boss Carlos Marcello. Former D. C. Congressional Delegate Walter Fountroy chaired the House Select Committee on Assassinations for a period of time and discovered his telephones and television were bugged. Fauntroy said in a 1999 trial that Richard Sprague's replacement, Robert Blakey, did not follow up on James Earl Ray's request for files from the CIA and others. What is clear is that Mr. Blakey would have signed a secrecy agreement with the CIA and others for whatever information he received thus even if he knew today that James Earl Ray was innocent he would be legally bound not to say so. http://www.bestsyndication.com/Articles/20...es_earl_ray.htm

Religion is an interesting aspect of this subject. Joseph McCarthy was of course a Roman Catholic. This religious group had been especially anti-communist (Spain, Germany and the US in the 1930s). I assume the Irish Times article might have been influenced by the religious views of the writer. Note, he raises the issue of McCarthy being anti-Semetic. Interestingly, LBJ smeared JFK with his family's support of McCarthy during the 1960 campaign for the Democratic nomination. Another aspect of this story that I did not include above was McCarthy's homosexuality. For some time opponents of McCarthy had been accumulating evidence concerning his homosexual activities. Several members of his staff, including Roy Cohn and David Schine, were also suspected of having a sexual relationship with McCarthy. Although well-known by political journalists, the first article about it did not appear until Hank Greenspun published an article in the Las Vagas Sun in 25th October, 1952. Greenspun wrote that: "It is common talk among homosexuals in Milwaukee who rendezvous in the White Horse Inn that Senator Joe McCarthy has often engaged in homosexual activities." McCarthy considered a libel suit against Greenspun but decided against it when he was told by his lawyers that if the case went ahead he would have to take the witness stand and answer questions about his sexuality. In an attempt to stop the rumours circulating, McCarthy married his secretary, Jeannie Kerr. Later the couple adopted a five-week old girl from the New York Foundling Home.

Julian Borger Washington Wednesday March 22, 2006 The Guardian "I just killed a kid," Charles Martin told the emergency services operator. "I shot him with a goddamn 410 shotgun twice." He had gunned down Larry Mugrage, his neighbours' 15-year-old son. The teenager's crime: walking across Mr Martin's lawn on his way home. Mr Martin opened fire from his house and then, according to the police, walked up to the wounded boy and pulled the trigger again at close range, killing him. Even in a country with a long history of gun violence, the killing of Larry Mugrage in a quiet Cincinnati suburb on Monday stands out as particularly senseless. Mr Martin seems to have been liked well enough in the neat bungalow-lined streets of Union Township, but he appears to have been obsessed with the territorial integrity of his patchy lawn. Neighbours said he would work himself into a rage if they mowed a foot over the invisible dividing line separating their gardens. "He was really warped on that stuff," one local resident said. Even after killing a young boy, who was apparently running home to fetch a video game, Mr Martin, 66, seemed indignant. "I've been being harassed by him and his parents for five years. Today just blew it up," he told the operator. "Kid's just been giving me a bunch of xxxx, making the other kids harass me and my place, tearing things up." "Okay, so what'd you do?" the police dispatcher asked. "I shot him with a goddamn 410 shotgun twice." "You shot him with a shotgun? Where is he?" "He's laying in his yard," Mr Martin said in a tone of calm satisfaction, as if he had just disposed of a dangerous animal. Larry Mugrage, a popular hard-working and clever schoolboy, added his name to a high and persistent death toll. A child is killed by a gun every three hours in America. According to the latest statistics, nearly 1,000 children under 19 are shot dead every year. Another 800 use guns to commit suicide, and more than 160 die in firearm accidents. Forty per cent of American households own guns, but those guns are 22 times more likely to be involved in an accidental shooting, or 11 times more likely to be used in a suicide, than in self-defence. On average, more than 80 Americans are killed by gunfire every day. But the US gun control debate has faded from the political scene. The Democrats, desperate to win support in conservative states where gun ownership rights are sacrosanct, have muted their enthusiasm for regulation. The party's last presidential candidate, John Kerry, made sure he was pictured shooting ducks at the height of the campaign in Ohio, a swing state. "The gun control debate on the national stage is non-existent for the time being," said Jens Ludwig, an expert on the issue at Georgetown University. "There are growing rumblings in Democratic circles that gun control is hurting them in the southern and western states they are trying to win." Instead, the cause has been left largely to pressure groups which have been repeatedly bulldozed by the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA). A nationwide ban on assault weapons such as semi-automatic rifles expired in 2004, and other restrictions have been rolled back state by state. Mr Martin had every right to his .410 (11mm) bore shotgun. Ohio does not require anyone buying any firearm to have a permit. Nor does the state require gunowners to have a licence, although some inner city municipalities have stricter rules. Most state legislatures considering gun legislation are seeking to relax the remaining controls. Last year, Florida introduced a law giving its citizens the right to "stand their ground" and open fire, even in a public place, if they feel threatened, and the gun lobby is trying to pass a bill in the state that would allow workers to bring guns into their workplace with or without their employer's consent. Under pressure from the NRA, the Republican-run House of Representatives is investigating the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for "abuse" of its power for cracking down on rural "gun shows" where controls on sales are generally looser. Larry Mugrage will be mourned in Union Township as another victim of inexplicable rage, but the means used to kill him are unlikely to raise many eyebrows. Controls on shotgun ownership have never really been on the table in the debate, and that has been over for more than a year on the national stage. Mr Martin would have been within his constitutional rights to guard his lawn with an AK-47. Charles Martin called the emergency services operator after attacking Larry Mugrage. This is a transcript: Martin I've been being harassed by him and his parents for five years. Today just blew it up. Kid's just been giving me a bunch of xxxx, making the other kids harass me and my place, tearing things up. Operator OK, so what'd you do? Martin I shot him with a goddamn 410 shotgun twice. Operator You shot him with a shotgun? Where is he? Martin He's laying in his yard. Guns in America * 32.6% of adults keep guns in or around their home, according to a 2002 survey. An estimated 40% own a gun * 30,136 people were killed by firearms in the US in 2003; 730 of these were accidental * 1.3m rifles were manufactured in the US in 2004; as well as an estimated 294,000 revolvers; 728,500 pistols; and 732,000 shotguns. Only 132,500 of these weapons were exported http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...1736395,00.html

Marcel Berlins Wednesday March 22, 2006 The Guardian Last Thursday, the general assembly of the United Nations voted to set up a new human rights council, to actively promote, monitor and supervise the delivery of human rights in the member states. Only four countries voted against. The US was one. The others were Israel, the Marshall Islands (population 59,000) and Palau (population 20,000). Last month, the report of a UN inquiry into Guantánamo Bay called on the US administration to shut the prison down, because of its constant flouting of all the international laws and human rights principles governing prisoners, not least the prohibition of torture. The report was immediately, contemptuously and curtly rubbished by the US authorities, who pointed out that the five UN envoys had not spoken to any of the Guantánamo detainees, so how could their conclusions be accorded any validity? The reason why the envoys had not interviewed any prisoners was that the authorities had denied them access. (Instead, they spoke at length to freed prisoners, and to doctors and lawyers who had been there.) In a lecture under the auspices of "Justice" on Monday, Mary Robinson - former president of the Irish Republic and former UN high commissioner for human rights - pointed out the telling coincidence that on the same day that the Americans spat on the UN inquiry's report, China, for the first time, opened its prisons to allow in international human rights inspectors. And yes, they were able to talk to the prisoners. This does not mean that China has suddenly become a country that firmly adheres to all human rights principles, but it does demonstrate a depressing trend. As many countries with historically poor human rights records are being persuaded to relax their restrictive regimes and treat those under their control, including detainees, better, the US is travelling in the other direction. This is not to deny that there are still many worse governments in the human rights league (Zimbabwe, Belarus, Cuba and a lot more), but to trace the decline of the US. Of course they have had to take certain steps; they had 9/11. But there was no need to go as far as they have done. In her lecture, Mary Robinson made the point that by meeting lawlessness (the terror attacks) with illegality (I take it that she meant the invasion of Iraq, as well as the treatment of Guantánamo detainees), the US was surrendering the high moral ground, which (I add) it has taken two centuries to establish and develop, and the principles of which it has been trying to instil into other nations. I think it is more serious than just ceding the moral heights. What I believe may be happening is not just a proportionate adjustment to new circumstances, but a shift in a nation's fundamental morality. The changes started with the US government and have trickled down insidiously to the people. It isn't just the disdainful way the administration treats its critics, whether they be the UN, other governments, or individuals. Nor is it the actual legal and administrative measures taken in the name of the so-called war against terrorism. Bad laws, after all, can always be reversed. What worries me more is attitudes. There is an awful description in use about the present situation - the "new normal". It means that life after 9/11 is not the same as before and, by implication, can never be the same again. The new normal encompasses a diminution of human rights, the relegation of the rule of law, not caring whether or not individuals against whom state action is taken are innocent, and the acceptance of personal restrictions and impositions that were once the hallmark of less civilised nations. Anything goes and everything is permissible - in the cause of war. In theory, when the danger of terrorism recedes, those attitudes (and the practical steps taken by governments and other institutions wielding power) will shift into reverse, and America will leave the troubled land of new normal and return to normal. But that won't happen. Too many attitudes will have become ingrained, too many old moral precepts will have disappeared. Occupations of foreign countries come to an end, and one day even Guantánamo Bay will be emptied. Political, military, legal and financial priorities and policies will change. But what I fear is that the brutalised morality of the country will take far longer to heal. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...1736501,00.html

I would argue that Rod Aldridge and Capita are to Tony Blair what Herman Brown and Brown & Root (Halliburton) was to Lyndon Johnson. Until Tony Blair came to power Capita was a little-known IT firm with a £112 million turnover relying heavily on contracts with local authorities. This included Brighton Council. The council leader, Steve Bassam, was given a peerage by Blair soon after he was elected in 1997. The following year Lord Bassam joined Capita as a consultant. This was a shrewd move as Bassam introduced Aldridge to Blair. Aldridge, who went to school in Brighton, got on very well with Blair and soon began donating money to New Labour (he had been a supporter of the Conservative Party before 1997). Over the last ten years Aldridge has won contracts to administer the following: Supplying BBC licences (£500m) Child Trusts Funds (£430m) Criminal Records Bureau (£400m) London Congestion Charge Scheme (£280m) Department of Education Literacy and Numeracy Strategies (£177m) Miners’ Liability Claims (£145m) Online Services for Department of Work and Pensions (£118m) Connexions Discount Card (£100m) BBC jobs in Northern Ireland (£100m) Department of Work and Pensions Records Management (£70m) Teachers’ Pensions (£62m) Individual Learning Account Scheme (£55m) Department of Education Maintenance Allowance (£49m) TFL Congestion Charge Scheme (£31m) Driving Standards Agency (£22m) Healthcare for Civil Servants (£12m) Management Support for LEAs (£0.4m) Recruitment for Customs and Excise (£0.3m) Despite being fined for a string of high-profile blunders, Capita (nicknamed Crapita) has been chosen to provide virtually every public sector contract it bids for. In return Aldridge has given £2m to support City Academies and given a £1m loan to New Labour (he is now demanding it back because he has not been given a peerage). That is not bad for a man who has obtained £2.6bn in government contracts and has a personal fortune of £73m.

With the release of Good Night, and Good Luck, it might be worth considering an interpretation exercise of McCarthyism. See for example: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6401

With the release of Good Night, and Good Luck, it might be worth considering an interpretation exercise on McCarthyism. For example, I have included a review of the film from the Irish Times and my own comments on the film and article. Kevin Myers, The Irish Times (22nd March, 2006) We are all familiar with the McCarthyite witch-hunts behind the George Clooney film, Good Night and Good Luck. They are a salutary tale of how one evil man, Senator Joe McCarthy, set about the destruction of liberalism in the US in an insane search for wholly imaginary communist subversives, using the hilariously named House Un-American Activities Committee. His hysterical campaign - amongst other things - ruined the careers of 10 innocent Hollywood screenwriters, and the lunacy was finally brought to an end by the one man who was brave enough to stand up to McCarthy: the broadcaster Ed Murrow. I guess we could all pass an exam on that one - but what we'd be passing would not be a test of our knowledge of history but of liberal mythology. For Senator McCarthy had nothing to do with the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was a senator, not a member of the House of Representatives, and the HUAC was first formed in 1938, when he was still an unsuccessful lawyer. And he was right. There was a major communist conspiracy to overthrow the US government, with the Hollywood Ten being an extended part of that conspiracy. And the man really responsible for ending McCarthy's campaign wasn't a journalist, but President Eisenhower. In 1943, a far-sighted soldier, Colonel Carter Clarke, head of army special branch, hearing reports of a possible separate peace between the USSR and Nazi Germany, ordered an analysis of Soviet diplomatic signals between the US and Moscow to check for such a possibility. Soviet codes depended on a complex ciphering system, involving a "one-time pad", which their authors thought impenetrable. However, US codebreakers managed finally to break it, and the resulting product was known as "Venona". It caused a sensation within American intelligence circles. Far from diplomats sending coded traffic to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in Moscow over any Nazi-USSR détente, they were actually sending vast amounts of intelligence material from trained field officers to General Pavel Finn, head of the KGB foreign desk. In 1944, one of the first telegrams to be broken revealed, terrifyingly, that Soviet spies had even penetrated Project Manhattan, the programme to make an atom bomb. By 1948, and just from the small proportion of Soviet material which cryptanalysts had been able to break, US intelligence had identified 349 US spies working for the Soviet Union. They were everywhere. Harry White, the second most powerful figure in the US Treasury, architect of the Bretton Woods Agreement, and founder-member of the US delegation at the UN, was one. Lauchlin Currie, a trusted aide to President Roosevelt, was one. Maurice Halpern, head of project-research at the Office of Strategic Studies (forerunner to the CIA) was one. William Perle, running the main US jet-engine development project, was one. Laurence Duggan, a top man at State and the main foreign policy adviser to the vice-president, was one. David Greenglass, Klaus Fuchs and Julius Rosenberg, all nuclear scientists at Los Alamos, were ones. Judith Coplon, senior FBI admin officer controlling the bureau's counter-espionage files, was one. And Gregory Silvermaster was both senior government economist and a spymaster running an entire network of communist agents at every level of government. That was bad. Worse, how many more were there? For it was true. There really were reds under the beds - and not nice reds who thought we should all live in peace and harmony, but loyal servants of Stalin, eager to impose his state terrorism around the world. With them installed in the heart of US government and of defence, the Soviet Union had been confident enough to go on the global offensive. Post-1945, and Eastern European countries fell one by one to communist parties, communist insurgents began wars in Vietnam and Malaya, and by 1949 were victorious in China, the same year the Soviet Union detonated an exact copy of the US Fat Boy atom bomb. The next year, North Korea attacked South Korea, nearly consuming it, and the US nuclear threat, which might have deterred that invasion, had been neutralised by the Los Alamos spies. In other words, in essence, Joe McCarthy was right. He brought the appalling truth to the attention of the people of the US. However, he was also a drunken demagogue and a xxxx, and often and easily ran out of control. Nonetheless, utterly unlike Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs or the Hollywood Ten, he was, roughly, on the side of democracy. And in the end he was defeated by democratic means which he had himself defended - the institutions of the USA. Three months before Ed Murrow had even begun his television criticism of McCarthy, President Eisenhower authorised the US army (which of course 10 years before, had first discovered the level of the internal communist threat) to start its own major criticisms of McCarthy and his campaign. But of course, "liberal" Hollywood today would never make a film in which Eisenhower and the US army are seen to defend democracy, so the hero of Goodnight has to belong to the golden media classes. Meanwhile, the knife in McCarthy's reputation is twisted by calling him an anti-Semite - though this disingenuously conceals the unhappy truth that the vast majority of Soviet agents in the US were Jewish. Moreover, we know this. Had the Hollywood Ten been stooges of that infinitely less chic (and, as it happens, considerably less murderous) school of totalitarianism, fascism, liberal America at the time would have been shrilly demanding their eviction from Hollywood. And equally, they would not be martyrs of the silver screen today. Review of the Review For Senator McCarthy had nothing to do with the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was a senator, not a member of the House of Representatives, and the HUAC was first formed in 1938, when he was still an unsuccessful lawyer. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) It is true that McCarthy was not a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The HUAC was originally established in 1937 under the chairmanship of Martin Dies. The main objective of the HUAC was the investigation of un-American and subversive activities. After Martin Dies ceased being chairman of the HUAC in 1944 he was followed by Edward Hart (1945), John S. Wood (1945-46), John Parnell Thomas (1947-48), John S. Wood (1949-1952) and Harold Velde (1953-54). Other key figures on the HUCA included Francis Walter, John Rankin, Karl Mundt and Richard Nixon. The connection between McCarthy and the HUAC was that he supplied them with information about left-wing political activists. Most of this information originally came from J. Edgar Hoover, although former members of the American Communist Party such as Whittaker Chambers, Louis Budenz and Nathaniel Weyl (a member of the Forum until his death in April, 2005) also provided him with information. And he (McCarthy) was right. There was a major communist conspiracy to overthrow the US government, with the Hollywood Ten being an extended part of that conspiracy. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) In 1947 the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), chaired by J. Parnell Thomas, began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named nineteen people who they accused of holding left-wing views. One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, an emigrant playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany. Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any questions. Known as the Hollywood Ten, they claimed that the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this. The House of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed and all were found guilty of contempt of congress and each was sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison. The reason they did not answer these questions was not because they were communist spies as Myers appears to be suggesting. If they were really involved in some sort of “communist conspiracy” they would have been charged with treason or spying. The only thing they had been guilty of was making films with a vaguely liberal message. Most of these films were made during the Second World War when it was acceptable to make anti-fascist films. This is not surprising when you consider that America was supposed to be fighting a war against fascism. The reason they refused to answer questions was the HUAC was trying to get the Hollywood Ten to name fellow members of the American Communist Party in the 1930s. The HUAC already knew these names as the FBI had a large number of undercover agents in the ACP. In fact, William Sullivan, the FBI agent involved in this spy program, estimated that around 50% of the members were working for the FBI. The whole idea was to get these former party members to betray their ideals by naming former comrades. They would then be blacklisted and have their careers ruined unless they also named names. The Hollywood Ten refused to do this and were therefore sent to prison. They remained blacklisted until 1960 when Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay for the film Spartacus. Based on the novel by another left-wing blacklisted writer, Howard Fast, Spartacus is a film that examines the spirit of revolt. Trumbo refers back to his experiences of the HUAC. At the end, when the Romans finally defeat the rebellion, the captured slaves refuse to identify Spartacus. As a result, all are crucified. In essence, Joe McCarthy was right. He brought the appalling truth to the attention of the people of the US. However, he was also a drunken demagogue and a xxxx, and often and easily ran out of control. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) Joe McCarthy did not “bring the truth to the people of the US.” Nor did he do this as part of some “moral campaign”. After the war McCarthy ran against Robert La Follette to become Republican candidate for the senate. As one of his biographers has pointed out, his campaign posters pictured him in "full fighting gear, with an aviator's cap, and belt upon belt of machine gun ammunition wrapped around his bulky torso." He claimed he had completed thirty-two missions when in fact he had a desk job and only flew in training exercises. In his campaign, McCarthy attacked La Follette for not enlisting during the war. La Follette had been forty-six when Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and was in fact too old to join the armed services. McCarthy also claimed that La Follette had made huge profits from his investments while he had been away fighting for his country. The suggestion that La Follette had been guilty of war profiteering (his investments had in fact been in a radio station), was deeply damaging and McCarthy won by 207,935 to 202,557. La Follette, deeply hurt by the false claims made against him, retired from politics, and later committed suicide. On his first day in the Senate, McCarthy called a press conference where he proposed a solution to a coal-strike that was taking place at the time. McCarthy called for John L. Lewis and the striking miners to be drafted into the Army. If the men still refused to mine the coal, McCarthy suggested they should be court-martialed for insubordination and shot. McCarthy's first years in the Senate were unimpressive. People also started coming forward claiming that he had lied about his war record. Another problem for McCarthy was that he was being investigated for tax offences and for taking bribes from the Pepsi-Cola Company. In May, 1950, afraid that he would be defeated in the next election, McCarthy held a meeting with some of his closest advisers and asked for suggestions on how he could retain his seat. Edmund Walsh, a Roman Catholic priest, came up with the idea that he should begin a campaign against communist subversives working in the Democratic administration. McCarthy also contacted his friend, the journalist, Jack Anderson. In his autobiography, Confessions of a Muckraker, Anderson pointed out: "At my prompting he (McCarthy) would phone fellow senators to ask what had transpired this morning behind closed doors or what strategy was planned for the morrow. While I listened in on an extension he would pump even a Robert Taft or a William Knowland with the handwritten questions I passed him." In return, Anderson provided McCarthy with information about politicians and state officials he suspected of being "communists". Anderson later recalled that his decision to work with McCarthy "was almost automatic.. for one thing, I owed him; for another, he might be able to flesh out some of our inconclusive material, and if so, I would no doubt get the scoop." As a result Anderson passed on his file on the presidential aide, David Demarest Lloyd. McCarthy also began receiving information from his friend, J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). William Sullivan, one of Hoover's agents, later admitted that: "We were the ones who made the McCarthy hearings possible. We fed McCarthy all the material he was using." On 9th February, 1950, McCarthy made a speech in Salt Lake City where he attacked Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State, as "a pompous diplomat in striped pants". He claimed that he had a list of 57 people in the State Department that were known to be members of the American Communist Party. McCarthy went on to argue that some of these people were passing secret information to the Soviet Union. He added: "The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because the enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer - the finest homes, the finest college educations, and the finest jobs in Government we can give." The list of names was not a secret and had been in fact published by the Secretary of State in 1946. These people had been identified during a preliminary screening of 3,000 federal employees. Some had been communists but others had been fascists, alcoholics and sexual deviants. As it happens, if McCarthy had been screened, his own drink problems and sexual preferences would have resulted in him being put on the list. On 20th February McCarthy made a six hour speech on the Senate floor about how the Democratic administration had been infiltrated by communist subversives. McCarthy named four of these people, who had held left-wing views in their youth, but when Democrats accused McCarthy of smear tactics, he suggested they were part of this communist conspiracy. This claim was used against his critics who were up for re-election in 1950. Many of them lost and this made other Democrats reluctant to criticize McCarthy in case they became targets of his smear campaigns. Drew Pearson immediately launched an attack on Joe McCarthy. He pointed out that only three people on the list were State Department officials. When this list was first published four years ago, Gustavo Duran and Mary Jane Keeney had both resigned from the State Department in 1946. The third person, John Service, had been cleared after a prolonged and careful investigation. Pearson also pointed out that none of these people had been members of the American Communist Party. With the war going badly in Korea and communist advances in Eastern Europe and in China, the American public were genuinely frightened about the possibilities of internal subversion. McCarthy, as chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate, was in an ideal position to exploit this situation. For the next two years McCarthy investigated various government departments and questioned a large number of people about their political past. Some people lost their jobs after they admitted they had been members of the Communist Party. McCarthy made it clear to the witnesses that the only way of showing that they had abandoned their left-wing views was by naming other members of the party. This witch-hunt and anti-communist hysteria became known as McCarthyism. Some left-wing artists and intellectuals were unwilling to live in this type of society and people such as Joseph Losey, Richard Wright, Ollie Harrington, James Baldwin, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole and Chester Himes went to live and work in Europe. The man really responsible for ending McCarthy's campaign wasn't a journalist, but President Eisenhower…. Three months before Ed Murrow had even begun his television criticism of McCarthy, President Eisenhower authorised the US army (which of course 10 years before, had first discovered the level of the internal communist threat) to start its own major criticisms of McCarthy and his campaign. But of course, "liberal" Hollywood today would never make a film in which Eisenhower and the US army are seen to defend democracy, so the hero of Goodnight has to belong to the golden media classes. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) This is of course not true. President Eisenhower constantly refused to condemn the activities of Joe McCarthy. The reason being is that McCarthy was doing tremendous damage to the Democratic Party. The Harry Truman administration had not been infiltrated by “communists”. They were just liberals who believed the best way to defeat communism was to support democratically elected governments in the underdeveloped world. That is why Harry Truman and Dean Acheson rejected the United Fruit Company proposal to order the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government in Guatemala in 1954. As soon as Eisenhower became president he ordered the CIA to carry out the coup. He did the same thing in Iran. McCarthy’s campaign to create mass hysteria concerning the communist threat, provided cover for Eisenhower’s new secret foreign policy (it was reported in Europe but the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird kept it from the American public). If any one person should be credited with the destruction of McCarthy (McCarthyism survived until the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989) it is Drew Pearson. By the end of June, 1950, Drew Pearson had written more than forty daily columns and a significant percentage of his weekly radio broadcasts, that had been devoted to discrediting the charges made by Joseph McCarthy. On 15th December, 1950, McCarthy made a speech in Congress where he claimed that Pearson was "the voice of international Communism" and "a Moscow-directed character assassin." McCarthy added that Pearson was "a prostitute of journalism" and that Pearson "and the Communist Party murdered James Forrestal in just as cold blood as though they had machine-gunned him." Over the next two months McCarthy made seven Senate speeches on Drew Pearson. He called for a "patriotic boycott" of his radio show and as a result, Adam Hats, withdrew as Pearson's radio sponsor. Although he was able to make a series of short-term arrangements, Pearson was never again able to find a permanent sponsor. Twelve newspapers cancelled their contract with Pearson. McCarthy and his friends also raised money to help Fred Napoleon Howser, the Attorney General of California, to sue Pearson for $350,000. This involved an incident in 1948 when Pearson accused Howser of consorting with mobsters and of taking a bribe from gambling interests. Help was also given to Father Charles Coughlin, who sued Pearson for $225,000. However, in 1951 the courts ruled that Pearson had not libeled either Howser or Coughlin. Only the St. Louis Star-Times defended Pearson. As its editorial pointed out: "If Joseph McCarthy can silence a critic named Drew Pearson, simply by smearing him with the brush of Communist association, he can silence any other critic." Other figures in the media who also stood up to McCarthy include the journalists George Seldes and I. F. Stone, and cartoonists, Herb Block and Daniel Fitzpatrick. Another important figure in the removal of McCarthy was Frank Wisner. He was head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This was the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the CIA. J. Edgar Hoover was jealous of the OPC’s growing power and in 1953 described the group as "Wisner's gang of weirdos". The FBI began carrying out investigations into their past. It did not take him long to discover that some of them had been active in left-wing politics in the 1930s. This information was passed to Joseph McCarthy who started making attacks on members of the OPC. Hoover also passed to McCarthy details of an affair that Wisner had with Princess Caradja in Romania during the war. Hoover, claimed that Caradja was a Soviet agent and implied that Wisner was also a spy. McCarthy also claimed that Wisner’s top agent, Cord Meyer, was a communist. In August, 1953, Richard Helms, Wisner's deputy at the OPC, told Meyer that Joseph McCarthy had accused him of being a communist. The FBI added to the smear by announcing it was unwilling to give Meyer "security clearance". Unknown to McCarthy, Wisner and Meyer were running Operation Mockingbird (a highly secret CIA program to influence the American media). Wisner now ordered his CIA media assets to destroy McCarthy. In October, 1953, McCarthy began investigating communist infiltration into the military. Attempts were made by McCarthy to discredit Robert Stevens, the Secretary of the Army. Eisenhower was furious and removed protection of McCarthy. However, it was not until the following year that McCarthy was finally brought down. Edward Murrow, the experienced broadcaster, used his television programme, See It Now, on 9th March, 1954, to criticize McCarthy's methods. It was a sign of the times that it took a television programme to seriously damage McCarthy. The senate investigations into the United States Army were televised and this helped to expose the tactics of Joseph McCarthy. One newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, reported that: "In this long, degrading travesty of the democratic process, McCarthy has shown himself to be evil and unmatched in malice." Leading politicians in both parties, had been embarrassed by McCarthy's performance and on 2nd December, 1954, a censure motion condemned his conduct by 67 votes to 22. McCarthy also lost the chairmanship of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. He was now without a power base and the media lost interest in his claims of a communist conspiracy. As one journalist, Willard Edwards, pointed out: "Most reporters just refused to file McCarthy stories. And most papers would not have printed them anyway." McCarthy, who had been drinking heavily for many years, was discovered to have cirrhosis of the liver. An alcoholic, he was unable to take the advice of doctors and friends to stop drinking. Joseph McCarthy died in the Bethesda Naval Hospital on 2nd May, 1957. As the newspapers reported, McCarthy had drunk himself to death. Meanwhile, the knife in McCarthy's reputation is twisted by calling him an anti-Semite - though this disingenuously conceals the unhappy truth that the vast majority of Soviet agents in the US were Jewish. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) A high percentage of those blacklisted as a result of McCarthyism were indeed Jewish. However, this is not because McCarthy was necessarily anti-Semitic. It is just a reflection on the background of most liberals and anti-fascists in America in the 1930s. When you consider the way the Jews were being treated by the fascists in Europe this is not very surprising. The Jews in America also had a long record of campaigning on civil rights issues. Understandably this encouraged many of them to join the Communist Party and the Socialist Party in America. Had the Hollywood Ten been stooges of that infinitely less chic (and, as it happens, considerably less murderous) school of totalitarianism, fascism, liberal America at the time would have been shrilly demanding their eviction from Hollywood. And equally, they would not be martyrs of the silver screen today. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) Of course, those on the right in America in the 1930s were highly sympathetic to German fascism. After all, Hitler claimed he got some of his ideas on the treatment of Jews from studying white politicians in the Deep South. McCarthyism started off as an attempt to cover-up McCarthy’s corrupt activities. We now know that a large number of these anti-communists were involved in corruption. (Not referring to you Tim Gratz if you are reading this). John Parnell Thomas was chairman of the HUAC during the Hollywood purges. His secretary, Helen Campbell, leaked information about his corrupt activities to the journalist, Drew Pearson. On 4th August, 1948, Pearson published the story that Thomas had been putting friends on his congressional payroll. They did no work but in return shared their salaries with Thomas. Called before a grand jury, Thomas availed himself to the 1st Amendment, a strategy that he had been unwilling to accept when dealing with the Hollywood Ten. Indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the government, Thomas was found guilty and sentenced to 18 months in prison and forced to pay a $10,000 fine. Two of his fellow inmates in Danbury Prison were Lester Cole and Ring Lardner Jr. who were serving terms as a result of refusing to testify in front of Thomas and the HUAC. You can read more about these issues here: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAred.htm

For Senator McCarthy had nothing to do with the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was a senator, not a member of the House of Representatives, and the HUAC was first formed in 1938, when he was still an unsuccessful lawyer. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) It is true that McCarthy was not a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The HUAC was originally established in 1937 under the chairmanship of Martin Dies. The main objective of the HUAC was the investigation of un-American and subversive activities. After Martin Dies ceased being chairman of the HUAC in 1944 he was followed by Edward Hart (1945), John S. Wood (1945-46), John Parnell Thomas (1947-48), John S. Wood (1949-1952) and Harold Velde (1953-54). Other key figures on the HUCA included Francis Walter, John Rankin, Karl Mundt and Richard Nixon. The connection between McCarthy and the HUAC was that he supplied them with information about left-wing political activists. Most of this information originally came from J. Edgar Hoover, although former members of the American Communist Party such as Whittaker Chambers, Louis Budenz and Nathaniel Weyl (a member of the Forum until his death in April, 2005) also provided him with information. And he (McCarthy) was right. There was a major communist conspiracy to overthrow the US government, with the Hollywood Ten being an extended part of that conspiracy. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) In 1947 the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), chaired by J. Parnell Thomas, began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named nineteen people who they accused of holding left-wing views. One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, an emigrant playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany. Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any questions. Known as the Hollywood Ten, they claimed that the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this. The House of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed and all were found guilty of contempt of congress and each was sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison. The reason they did not answer these questions was not because they were communist spies as Myers appears to be suggesting. If they were really involved in some sort of “communist conspiracy” they would have been charged with treason or spying. The only thing they had been guilty of was making films with a vaguely liberal message. Most of these films were made during the Second World War when it was acceptable to make anti-fascist films. This is not surprising when you consider that America was supposed to be fighting a war against fascism. The reason they refused to answer questions was the HUAC was trying to get the Hollywood Ten to name fellow members of the American Communist Party in the 1930s. The HUAC already knew these names as the FBI had a large number of undercover agents in the ACP. In fact, William Sullivan, the FBI agent involved in this spy program, estimated that around 50% of the members were working for the FBI. The whole idea was to get these former party members to betray their ideals by naming former comrades. They would then be blacklisted and have their careers ruined unless they also named names. The Hollywood Ten refused to do this and were therefore sent to prison. They remained blacklisted until 1960 when Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay for the film Spartacus. Based on the novel by another left-wing blacklisted writer, Howard Fast, Spartacus is a film that examines the spirit of revolt. Trumbo refers back to his experiences of the HUAC. At the end, when the Romans finally defeat the rebellion, the captured slaves refuse to identify Spartacus. As a result, all are crucified. In essence, Joe McCarthy was right. He brought the appalling truth to the attention of the people of the US. However, he was also a drunken demagogue and a xxxx, and often and easily ran out of control. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) Joe McCarthy did not “bring the truth to the people of the US.” Nor did he do this as part of some “moral campaign”. After the war McCarthy ran against Robert La Follette to become Republican candidate for the senate. As one of his biographers has pointed out, his campaign posters pictured him in "full fighting gear, with an aviator's cap, and belt upon belt of machine gun ammunition wrapped around his bulky torso." He claimed he had completed thirty-two missions when in fact he had a desk job and only flew in training exercises. In his campaign, McCarthy attacked La Follette for not enlisting during the war. La Follette had been forty-six when Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and was in fact too old to join the armed services. McCarthy also claimed that La Follette had made huge profits from his investments while he had been away fighting for his country. The suggestion that La Follette had been guilty of war profiteering (his investments had in fact been in a radio station), was deeply damaging and McCarthy won by 207,935 to 202,557. La Follette, deeply hurt by the false claims made against him, retired from politics, and later committed suicide. On his first day in the Senate, McCarthy called a press conference where he proposed a solution to a coal-strike that was taking place at the time. McCarthy called for John L. Lewis and the striking miners to be drafted into the Army. If the men still refused to mine the coal, McCarthy suggested they should be court-martialed for insubordination and shot. McCarthy's first years in the Senate were unimpressive. People also started coming forward claiming that he had lied about his war record. Another problem for McCarthy was that he was being investigated for tax offences and for taking bribes from the Pepsi-Cola Company. In May, 1950, afraid that he would be defeated in the next election, McCarthy held a meeting with some of his closest advisers and asked for suggestions on how he could retain his seat. Edmund Walsh, a Roman Catholic priest, came up with the idea that he should begin a campaign against communist subversives working in the Democratic administration. McCarthy also contacted his friend, the journalist, Jack Anderson. In his autobiography, Confessions of a Muckraker, Anderson pointed out: "At my prompting he (McCarthy) would phone fellow senators to ask what had transpired this morning behind closed doors or what strategy was planned for the morrow. While I listened in on an extension he would pump even a Robert Taft or a William Knowland with the handwritten questions I passed him." In return, Anderson provided McCarthy with information about politicians and state officials he suspected of being "communists". Anderson later recalled that his decision to work with McCarthy "was almost automatic.. for one thing, I owed him; for another, he might be able to flesh out some of our inconclusive material, and if so, I would no doubt get the scoop." As a result Anderson passed on his file on the presidential aide, David Demarest Lloyd. McCarthy also began receiving information from his friend, J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). William Sullivan, one of Hoover's agents, later admitted that: "We were the ones who made the McCarthy hearings possible. We fed McCarthy all the material he was using." On 9th February, 1950, McCarthy made a speech in Salt Lake City where he attacked Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State, as "a pompous diplomat in striped pants". He claimed that he had a list of 57 people in the State Department that were known to be members of the American Communist Party. McCarthy went on to argue that some of these people were passing secret information to the Soviet Union. He added: "The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because the enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer - the finest homes, the finest college educations, and the finest jobs in Government we can give." The list of names was not a secret and had been in fact published by the Secretary of State in 1946. These people had been identified during a preliminary screening of 3,000 federal employees. Some had been communists but others had been fascists, alcoholics and sexual deviants. As it happens, if McCarthy had been screened, his own drink problems and sexual preferences would have resulted in him being put on the list. On 20th February McCarthy made a six hour speech on the Senate floor about how the Democratic administration had been infiltrated by communist subversives. McCarthy named four of these people, who had held left-wing views in their youth, but when Democrats accused McCarthy of smear tactics, he suggested they were part of this communist conspiracy. This claim was used against his critics who were up for re-election in 1950. Many of them lost and this made other Democrats reluctant to criticize McCarthy in case they became targets of his smear campaigns. Drew Pearson immediately launched an attack on Joe McCarthy. He pointed out that only three people on the list were State Department officials. When this list was first published four years ago, Gustavo Duran and Mary Jane Keeney had both resigned from the State Department in 1946. The third person, John Service, had been cleared after a prolonged and careful investigation. Pearson also pointed out that none of these people had been members of the American Communist Party. With the war going badly in Korea and communist advances in Eastern Europe and in China, the American public were genuinely frightened about the possibilities of internal subversion. McCarthy, as chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate, was in an ideal position to exploit this situation. For the next two years McCarthy investigated various government departments and questioned a large number of people about their political past. Some people lost their jobs after they admitted they had been members of the Communist Party. McCarthy made it clear to the witnesses that the only way of showing that they had abandoned their left-wing views was by naming other members of the party. This witch-hunt and anti-communist hysteria became known as McCarthyism. Some left-wing artists and intellectuals were unwilling to live in this type of society and people such as Joseph Losey, Richard Wright, Ollie Harrington, James Baldwin, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole and Chester Himes went to live and work in Europe. The man really responsible for ending McCarthy's campaign wasn't a journalist, but President Eisenhower…. Three months before Ed Murrow had even begun his television criticism of McCarthy, President Eisenhower authorised the US army (which of course 10 years before, had first discovered the level of the internal communist threat) to start its own major criticisms of McCarthy and his campaign. But of course, "liberal" Hollywood today would never make a film in which Eisenhower and the US army are seen to defend democracy, so the hero of Goodnight has to belong to the golden media classes. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) This is of course not true. President Eisenhower constantly refused to condemn the activities of Joe McCarthy. The reason being is that McCarthy was doing tremendous damage to the Democratic Party. The Harry Truman administration had not been infiltrated by “communists”. They were just liberals who believed the best way to defeat communism was to support democratically elected governments in the underdeveloped world. That is why Harry Truman and Dean Acheson rejected the United Fruit Company proposal to order the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government in Guatemala in 1954. As soon as Eisenhower became president he ordered the CIA to carry out the coup. He did the same thing in Iran. McCarthy’s campaign to create mass hysteria concerning the communist threat, provided cover for Eisenhower’s new secret foreign policy (it was reported in Europe but the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird kept it from the American public). If any one person should be credited with the destruction of McCarthy (McCarthyism survived until the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989) it is Drew Pearson. By the end of June, 1950, Drew Pearson had written more than forty daily columns and a significant percentage of his weekly radio broadcasts, that had been devoted to discrediting the charges made by Joseph McCarthy. On 15th December, 1950, McCarthy made a speech in Congress where he claimed that Pearson was "the voice of international Communism" and "a Moscow-directed character assassin." McCarthy added that Pearson was "a prostitute of journalism" and that Pearson "and the Communist Party murdered James Forrestal in just as cold blood as though they had machine-gunned him." Over the next two months McCarthy made seven Senate speeches on Drew Pearson. He called for a "patriotic boycott" of his radio show and as a result, Adam Hats, withdrew as Pearson's radio sponsor. Although he was able to make a series of short-term arrangements, Pearson was never again able to find a permanent sponsor. Twelve newspapers cancelled their contract with Pearson. McCarthy and his friends also raised money to help Fred Napoleon Howser, the Attorney General of California, to sue Pearson for $350,000. This involved an incident in 1948 when Pearson accused Howser of consorting with mobsters and of taking a bribe from gambling interests. Help was also given to Father Charles Coughlin, who sued Pearson for $225,000. However, in 1951 the courts ruled that Pearson had not libeled either Howser or Coughlin. Only the St. Louis Star-Times defended Pearson. As its editorial pointed out: "If Joseph McCarthy can silence a critic named Drew Pearson, simply by smearing him with the brush of Communist association, he can silence any other critic." Other figures in the media who also stood up to McCarthy include the journalists George Seldes and I. F. Stone, and cartoonists, Herb Block and Daniel Fitzpatrick. Another important figure in the removal of McCarthy was Frank Wisner. He was head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This was the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the CIA. J. Edgar Hoover was jealous of the OPC’s growing power and in 1953 described the group as "Wisner's gang of weirdos". The FBI began carrying out investigations into their past. It did not take him long to discover that some of them had been active in left-wing politics in the 1930s. This information was passed to Joseph McCarthy who started making attacks on members of the OPC. Hoover also passed to McCarthy details of an affair that Wisner had with Princess Caradja in Romania during the war. Hoover, claimed that Caradja was a Soviet agent and implied that Wisner was also a spy. McCarthy also claimed that Wisner’s top agent, Cord Meyer, was a communist. In August, 1953, Richard Helms, Wisner's deputy at the OPC, told Meyer that Joseph McCarthy had accused him of being a communist. The FBI added to the smear by announcing it was unwilling to give Meyer "security clearance". Unknown to McCarthy, Wisner and Meyer were running Operation Mockingbird (a highly secret CIA program to influence the American media). Wisner now ordered his CIA media assets to destroy McCarthy. In October, 1953, McCarthy began investigating communist infiltration into the military. Attempts were made by McCarthy to discredit Robert Stevens, the Secretary of the Army. Eisenhower was furious and removed protection of McCarthy. However, it was not until the following year that McCarthy was finally brought down. Edward Murrow, the experienced broadcaster, used his television programme, See It Now, on 9th March, 1954, to criticize McCarthy's methods. It was a sign of the times that it took a television programme to seriously damage McCarthy. The senate investigations into the United States Army were televised and this helped to expose the tactics of Joseph McCarthy. One newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, reported that: "In this long, degrading travesty of the democratic process, McCarthy has shown himself to be evil and unmatched in malice." Leading politicians in both parties, had been embarrassed by McCarthy's performance and on 2nd December, 1954, a censure motion condemned his conduct by 67 votes to 22. McCarthy also lost the chairmanship of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. He was now without a power base and the media lost interest in his claims of a communist conspiracy. As one journalist, Willard Edwards, pointed out: "Most reporters just refused to file McCarthy stories. And most papers would not have printed them anyway." McCarthy, who had been drinking heavily for many years, was discovered to have cirrhosis of the liver. An alcoholic, he was unable to take the advice of doctors and friends to stop drinking. Joseph McCarthy died in the Bethesda Naval Hospital on 2nd May, 1957. As the newspapers reported, McCarthy had drunk himself to death. Meanwhile, the knife in McCarthy's reputation is twisted by calling him an anti-Semite - though this disingenuously conceals the unhappy truth that the vast majority of Soviet agents in the US were Jewish. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) A high percentage of those blacklisted as a result of McCarthyism were indeed Jewish. However, this is not because McCarthy was necessarily anti-Semitic. It is just a reflection on the background of most liberals and anti-fascists in America in the 1930s. When you consider the way the Jews were being treated by the fascists in Europe this is not very surprising. The Jews in America also had a long record of campaigning on civil rights issues. Understandably this encouraged many of them to join the Communist Party and the Socialist Party in America. Had the Hollywood Ten been stooges of that infinitely less chic (and, as it happens, considerably less murderous) school of totalitarianism, fascism, liberal America at the time would have been shrilly demanding their eviction from Hollywood. And equally, they would not be martyrs of the silver screen today. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) Of course, those on the right in America in the 1930s were highly sympathetic to German fascism. After all, Hitler claimed he got some of his ideas on the treatment of Jews from studying white politicians in the Deep South. McCarthyism started off as an attempt to cover-up McCarthy’s corrupt activities. We now know that a large number of these anti-communists were involved in corruption. (Not referring to you Tim Gratz if you are reading this). John Parnell Thomas was chairman of the HUAC during the Hollywood purges. His secretary, Helen Campbell, leaked information about his corrupt activities to the journalist, Drew Pearson. On 4th August, 1948, Pearson published the story that Thomas had been putting friends on his congressional payroll. They did no work but in return shared their salaries with Thomas. Called before a grand jury, Thomas availed himself to the 1st Amendment, a strategy that he had been unwilling to accept when dealing with the Hollywood Ten. Indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the government, Thomas was found guilty and sentenced to 18 months in prison and forced to pay a $10,000 fine. Two of his fellow inmates in Danbury Prison were Lester Cole and Ring Lardner Jr. who were serving terms as a result of refusing to testify in front of Thomas and the HUAC. You can read more about these issues here: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAred.htm

For Senator McCarthy had nothing to do with the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was a senator, not a member of the House of Representatives, and the HUAC was first formed in 1938, when he was still an unsuccessful lawyer. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) It is true that McCarthy was not a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The HUAC was originally established in 1937 under the chairmanship of Martin Dies. The main objective of the HUAC was the investigation of un-American and subversive activities. After Martin Dies ceased being chairman of the HUAC in 1944 he was followed by Edward Hart (1945), John S. Wood (1945-46), John Parnell Thomas (1947-48), John S. Wood (1949-1952) and Harold Velde (1953-54). Other key figures on the HUCA included Francis Walter, John Rankin, Karl Mundt and Richard Nixon. The connection between McCarthy and the HUAC was that he supplied them with information about left-wing political activists. Most of this information originally came from J. Edgar Hoover, although former members of the American Communist Party such as Whittaker Chambers, Louis Budenz and Nathaniel Weyl (a member of the Forum until his death in April, 2005) also provided him with information. And he (McCarthy) was right. There was a major communist conspiracy to overthrow the US government, with the Hollywood Ten being an extended part of that conspiracy. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) In 1947 the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), chaired by J. Parnell Thomas, began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named nineteen people who they accused of holding left-wing views. One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, an emigrant playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany. Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any questions. Known as the Hollywood Ten, they claimed that the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this. The House of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed and all were found guilty of contempt of congress and each was sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison. The reason they did not answer these questions was not because they were communist spies as Myers appears to be suggesting. If they were really involved in some sort of “communist conspiracy” they would have been charged with treason or spying. The only thing they had been guilty of was making films with a vaguely liberal message. Most of these films were made during the Second World War when it was acceptable to make anti-fascist films. This is not surprising when you consider that America was supposed to be fighting a war against fascism. The reason they refused to answer questions was the HUAC was trying to get the Hollywood Ten to name fellow members of the American Communist Party in the 1930s. The HUAC already knew these names as the FBI had a large number of undercover agents in the ACP. In fact, William Sullivan, the FBI agent involved in this spy program, estimated that around 50% of the members were working for the FBI. The whole idea was to get these former party members to betray their ideals by naming former comrades. They would then be blacklisted and have their careers ruined unless they also named names. The Hollywood Ten refused to do this and were therefore sent to prison. They remained blacklisted until 1960 when Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay for the film Spartacus. Based on the novel by another left-wing blacklisted writer, Howard Fast, Spartacus is a film that examines the spirit of revolt. Trumbo refers back to his experiences of the HUAC. At the end, when the Romans finally defeat the rebellion, the captured slaves refuse to identify Spartacus. As a result, all are crucified. In essence, Joe McCarthy was right. He brought the appalling truth to the attention of the people of the US. However, he was also a drunken demagogue and a xxxx, and often and easily ran out of control. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) Joe McCarthy did not “bring the truth to the people of the US.” Nor did he do this as part of some “moral campaign”. After the war McCarthy ran against Robert La Follette to become Republican candidate for the senate. As one of his biographers has pointed out, his campaign posters pictured him in "full fighting gear, with an aviator's cap, and belt upon belt of machine gun ammunition wrapped around his bulky torso." He claimed he had completed thirty-two missions when in fact he had a desk job and only flew in training exercises. In his campaign, McCarthy attacked La Follette for not enlisting during the war. La Follette had been forty-six when Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and was in fact too old to join the armed services. McCarthy also claimed that La Follette had made huge profits from his investments while he had been away fighting for his country. The suggestion that La Follette had been guilty of war profiteering (his investments had in fact been in a radio station), was deeply damaging and McCarthy won by 207,935 to 202,557. La Follette, deeply hurt by the false claims made against him, retired from politics, and later committed suicide. On his first day in the Senate, McCarthy called a press conference where he proposed a solution to a coal-strike that was taking place at the time. McCarthy called for John L. Lewis and the striking miners to be drafted into the Army. If the men still refused to mine the coal, McCarthy suggested they should be court-martialed for insubordination and shot. McCarthy's first years in the Senate were unimpressive. People also started coming forward claiming that he had lied about his war record. Another problem for McCarthy was that he was being investigated for tax offences and for taking bribes from the Pepsi-Cola Company. In May, 1950, afraid that he would be defeated in the next election, McCarthy held a meeting with some of his closest advisers and asked for suggestions on how he could retain his seat. Edmund Walsh, a Roman Catholic priest, came up with the idea that he should begin a campaign against communist subversives working in the Democratic administration. McCarthy also contacted his friend, the journalist, Jack Anderson. In his autobiography, Confessions of a Muckraker, Anderson pointed out: "At my prompting he (McCarthy) would phone fellow senators to ask what had transpired this morning behind closed doors or what strategy was planned for the morrow. While I listened in on an extension he would pump even a Robert Taft or a William Knowland with the handwritten questions I passed him." In return, Anderson provided McCarthy with information about politicians and state officials he suspected of being "communists". Anderson later recalled that his decision to work with McCarthy "was almost automatic.. for one thing, I owed him; for another, he might be able to flesh out some of our inconclusive material, and if so, I would no doubt get the scoop." As a result Anderson passed on his file on the presidential aide, David Demarest Lloyd. McCarthy also began receiving information from his friend, J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). William Sullivan, one of Hoover's agents, later admitted that: "We were the ones who made the McCarthy hearings possible. We fed McCarthy all the material he was using." On 9th February, 1950, McCarthy made a speech in Salt Lake City where he attacked Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State, as "a pompous diplomat in striped pants". He claimed that he had a list of 57 people in the State Department that were known to be members of the American Communist Party. McCarthy went on to argue that some of these people were passing secret information to the Soviet Union. He added: "The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because the enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer - the finest homes, the finest college educations, and the finest jobs in Government we can give." The list of names was not a secret and had been in fact published by the Secretary of State in 1946. These people had been identified during a preliminary screening of 3,000 federal employees. Some had been communists but others had been fascists, alcoholics and sexual deviants. As it happens, if McCarthy had been screened, his own drink problems and sexual preferences would have resulted in him being put on the list. On 20th February McCarthy made a six hour speech on the Senate floor about how the Democratic administration had been infiltrated by communist subversives. McCarthy named four of these people, who had held left-wing views in their youth, but when Democrats accused McCarthy of smear tactics, he suggested they were part of this communist conspiracy. This claim was used against his critics who were up for re-election in 1950. Many of them lost and this made other Democrats reluctant to criticize McCarthy in case they became targets of his smear campaigns. Drew Pearson immediately launched an attack on Joe McCarthy. He pointed out that only three people on the list were State Department officials. When this list was first published four years ago, Gustavo Duran and Mary Jane Keeney had both resigned from the State Department in 1946. The third person, John Service, had been cleared after a prolonged and careful investigation. Pearson also pointed out that none of these people had been members of the American Communist Party. With the war going badly in Korea and communist advances in Eastern Europe and in China, the American public were genuinely frightened about the possibilities of internal subversion. McCarthy, as chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate, was in an ideal position to exploit this situation. For the next two years McCarthy investigated various government departments and questioned a large number of people about their political past. Some people lost their jobs after they admitted they had been members of the Communist Party. McCarthy made it clear to the witnesses that the only way of showing that they had abandoned their left-wing views was by naming other members of the party. This witch-hunt and anti-communist hysteria became known as McCarthyism. Some left-wing artists and intellectuals were unwilling to live in this type of society and people such as Joseph Losey, Richard Wright, Ollie Harrington, James Baldwin, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole and Chester Himes went to live and work in Europe. The man really responsible for ending McCarthy's campaign wasn't a journalist, but President Eisenhower…. Three months before Ed Murrow had even begun his television criticism of McCarthy, President Eisenhower authorised the US army (which of course 10 years before, had first discovered the level of the internal communist threat) to start its own major criticisms of McCarthy and his campaign. But of course, "liberal" Hollywood today would never make a film in which Eisenhower and the US army are seen to defend democracy, so the hero of Goodnight has to belong to the golden media classes. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) This is of course not true. President Eisenhower constantly refused to condemn the activities of Joe McCarthy. The reason being is that McCarthy was doing tremendous damage to the Democratic Party. The Harry Truman administration had not been infiltrated by “communists”. They were just liberals who believed the best way to defeat communism was to support democratically elected governments in the underdeveloped world. That is why Harry Truman and Dean Acheson rejected the United Fruit Company proposal to order the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government in Guatemala in 1954. As soon as Eisenhower became president he ordered the CIA to carry out the coup. He did the same thing in Iran. McCarthy’s campaign to create mass hysteria concerning the communist threat, provided cover for Eisenhower’s new secret foreign policy (it was reported in Europe but the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird kept it from the American public). If any one person should be credited with the destruction of McCarthy (McCarthyism survived until the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989) it is Drew Pearson. By the end of June, 1950, Drew Pearson had written more than forty daily columns and a significant percentage of his weekly radio broadcasts, that had been devoted to discrediting the charges made by Joseph McCarthy. On 15th December, 1950, McCarthy made a speech in Congress where he claimed that Pearson was "the voice of international Communism" and "a Moscow-directed character assassin." McCarthy added that Pearson was "a prostitute of journalism" and that Pearson "and the Communist Party murdered James Forrestal in just as cold blood as though they had machine-gunned him." Over the next two months McCarthy made seven Senate speeches on Drew Pearson. He called for a "patriotic boycott" of his radio show and as a result, Adam Hats, withdrew as Pearson's radio sponsor. Although he was able to make a series of short-term arrangements, Pearson was never again able to find a permanent sponsor. Twelve newspapers cancelled their contract with Pearson. McCarthy and his friends also raised money to help Fred Napoleon Howser, the Attorney General of California, to sue Pearson for $350,000. This involved an incident in 1948 when Pearson accused Howser of consorting with mobsters and of taking a bribe from gambling interests. Help was also given to Father Charles Coughlin, who sued Pearson for $225,000. However, in 1951 the courts ruled that Pearson had not libeled either Howser or Coughlin. Only the St. Louis Star-Times defended Pearson. As its editorial pointed out: "If Joseph McCarthy can silence a critic named Drew Pearson, simply by smearing him with the brush of Communist association, he can silence any other critic." Other figures in the media who also stood up to McCarthy include the journalists George Seldes and I. F. Stone, and cartoonists, Herb Block and Daniel Fitzpatrick. Another important figure in the removal of McCarthy was Frank Wisner. He was head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This was the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the CIA. J. Edgar Hoover was jealous of the OPC’s growing power and in 1953 described the group as "Wisner's gang of weirdos". The FBI began carrying out investigations into their past. It did not take him long to discover that some of them had been active in left-wing politics in the 1930s. This information was passed to Joseph McCarthy who started making attacks on members of the OPC. Hoover also passed to McCarthy details of an affair that Wisner had with Princess Caradja in Romania during the war. Hoover, claimed that Caradja was a Soviet agent and implied that Wisner was also a spy. McCarthy also claimed that Wisner’s top agent, Cord Meyer, was a communist. In August, 1953, Richard Helms, Wisner's deputy at the OPC, told Meyer that Joseph McCarthy had accused him of being a communist. The FBI added to the smear by announcing it was unwilling to give Meyer "security clearance". Unknown to McCarthy, Wisner and Meyer were running Operation Mockingbird (a highly secret CIA program to influence the American media). Wisner now ordered his CIA media assets to destroy McCarthy. In October, 1953, McCarthy began investigating communist infiltration into the military. Attempts were made by McCarthy to discredit Robert Stevens, the Secretary of the Army. Eisenhower was furious and removed protection of McCarthy. However, it was not until the following year that McCarthy was finally brought down. Edward Murrow, the experienced broadcaster, used his television programme, See It Now, on 9th March, 1954, to criticize McCarthy's methods. It was a sign of the times that it took a television programme to seriously damage McCarthy. The senate investigations into the United States Army were televised and this helped to expose the tactics of Joseph McCarthy. One newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, reported that: "In this long, degrading travesty of the democratic process, McCarthy has shown himself to be evil and unmatched in malice." Leading politicians in both parties, had been embarrassed by McCarthy's performance and on 2nd December, 1954, a censure motion condemned his conduct by 67 votes to 22. McCarthy also lost the chairmanship of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. He was now without a power base and the media lost interest in his claims of a communist conspiracy. As one journalist, Willard Edwards, pointed out: "Most reporters just refused to file McCarthy stories. And most papers would not have printed them anyway." McCarthy, who had been drinking heavily for many years, was discovered to have cirrhosis of the liver. An alcoholic, he was unable to take the advice of doctors and friends to stop drinking. Joseph McCarthy died in the Bethesda Naval Hospital on 2nd May, 1957. As the newspapers reported, McCarthy had drunk himself to death. Meanwhile, the knife in McCarthy's reputation is twisted by calling him an anti-Semite - though this disingenuously conceals the unhappy truth that the vast majority of Soviet agents in the US were Jewish. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) A high percentage of those blacklisted as a result of McCarthyism were indeed Jewish. However, this is not because McCarthy was necessarily anti-Semitic. It is just a reflection on the background of most liberals and anti-fascists in America in the 1930s. When you consider the way the Jews were being treated by the fascists in Europe this is not very surprising. The Jews in America also had a long record of campaigning on civil rights issues. Understandably this encouraged many of them to join the Communist Party and the Socialist Party in America. Had the Hollywood Ten been stooges of that infinitely less chic (and, as it happens, considerably less murderous) school of totalitarianism, fascism, liberal America at the time would have been shrilly demanding their eviction from Hollywood. And equally, they would not be martyrs of the silver screen today. (Kevin Myers, The Irish Times) Of course, those on the right in America in the 1930s were highly sympathetic to German fascism. After all, Hitler claimed he got some of his ideas on the treatment of Jews from studying white politicians in the Deep South. McCarthyism started off as an attempt to cover-up McCarthy’s corrupt activities. We now know that a large number of these anti-communists were involved in corruption. (Not referring to you Tim Gratz if you are reading this). John Parnell Thomas was chairman of the HUAC during the Hollywood purges. His secretary, Helen Campbell, leaked information about his corrupt activities to the journalist, Drew Pearson. On 4th August, 1948, Pearson published the story that Thomas had been putting friends on his congressional payroll. They did no work but in return shared their salaries with Thomas. Called before a grand jury, Thomas availed himself to the 1st Amendment, a strategy that he had been unwilling to accept when dealing with the Hollywood Ten. Indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the government, Thomas was found guilty and sentenced to 18 months in prison and forced to pay a $10,000 fine. Two of his fellow inmates in Danbury Prison were Lester Cole and Ring Lardner Jr. who were serving terms as a result of refusing to testify in front of Thomas and the HUAC. You can read more about these issues here: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAred.htm

Why was Weissman and not Schmidt not interviewed by the Warren Commission? Was Joe Grinnan ever interviewed by the FBI about his role in Dallas?

Dan Briody points out in the Halliburton Agenda (page 160): “With Johnson in the White House, Albert Thomas holding the purse strings for government agencies (as the chair of the House Appropriations Committee), and George Brown acting on several business advisory councils and presidential commissions” the Suite 8F Group was in a very powerful position after the election. Briody adds that at the time Life Magazine published a cartoon of Kennedy with Johnson. Kennedy says to Johnson: "Now, Lyndon, I guess we can dig that tunnel to the Vatican." Johnson replies: "Okay, so long as Brown & Root get the contract."

There is a fascinating account of Johnson becoming JFK's running mate in Dan Briody's The Halliburton Agenda, 2004 (page 150): Johnson fell hopelessly behind in the polls, and essentially conceding defeat, agreed to become Kennedy's running mate. Herman Brown was incensed. August Belmont who was in Suite 8F with Herman Brown when the news came over the radio, recalled it this way: "Herman Brown... jumped up from his seat and said, 'Who told him he could do that?' and ran out of the room.

Hopefully such luck will continue on Friday and we might draw the other mediocre premiership team left in the tournament No chance. They will be knocked out on Thursday.

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